Historical Background of the Medical School
Wake Forest University School of Medicine, one of 125 accredited U.S. medical schools, and North Carolina Baptist Hospital together form Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. Programs of the medical school and hospital are interwoven to provide medical education, patient care, biomedical research, and community service of the highest professional level.
Wake Forest University School of Medicine is a continuation and expansion of the two-year Wake Forest College Medical School that was founded in 1902. North Carolina Baptist Hospital opened its doors to patients in 1923.
The Medical Center was established in 1941, when the medical school was expanded to a four-year institution and moved from Wake County to its present site adjacent to Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem. It was renamed Bowman Gray School of Medicine in memory of the benefactor who made the expansion possible. In 1997, Bowman Gray School of Medicine was renamed Wake Forest University School of Medicine on the Bowman Gray Campus.
The evolution of the Medical Center has been so remarkable that it frequently is referred to as the “Miracle on Hawthorne Hill.” The past 25 years, in particular, represent unparalleled progress, with each phase of expansion coming as a response to society’s changing healthcare needs.
In 1991, the Medical Center completed a $200 million building program that virtually doubled its space for research and patient care. Another $200 million program followed, including the Nursing Center at Oak Summit, the initial portion of Ardmore Tower, the J. Paul Sticht Center on Aging and Rehabilitation, CompRehab Plaza (an outpatient rehabilitation center), and a 2,234-space employee parking deck. Ardmore Tower includes a dietary kitchen, 900-seat dining area, emergency department, a day hospital, operating room expansion, and three floors of private rooms for patients. CompRehab Plaza houses one of the largest outpatient rehabilitation facilities on the east coast and offers patients the convenience of seeing their physicians and therapists in one visit. An 11-story, 248,000-square-foot Nutrition Research Building is nearing completion, and most floors are already occupied.
In 2002, Brenner Children’s Hospital and Health Services opened. The $115-million project included 11 new floors atop Ardmore Tower. Six of the floors house Brenner Children’s Hospital. A four-story Miller Plaza building includes Information Services and Public Relations and Marketing. In 2003, a new 813-space patient/visitor parking deck was completed at a cost of $14.8 million. In 2004, a 257,000-square-foot Outpatient Comprehensive Cancer Center Building opened at a cost of $75 million. Construction also was completed on a four-story, $28.8 million addition atop Ardmore East to provide additional private patient rooms.
In 2001, the Wake Forest University Board of Trustees created a new corporation, Wake Forest University Health Sciences, as a wholly owned, nonprofit subsidiary. WFU Health Sciences operates the medical school, the downtown research park, and a number of other subsidiaries.
The Physician Assistant Program has been relocated to a new building, Victoria Hall, at the downtown campus.
CompRehab Plaza WFU Health Sciences began construction of a 160,000-square-foot Biotechnology Research Facility I, which will provide laboratory and office space for medical school researchers as well as researchers from Winston-Salem State University. Also under construction there is a six-level 450-space parking deck. The total cost is expected to be $70 million.
The Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine was established at WFU Health Sciences in 2004. In addition, numerous multidisciplinary research centers, each with a defined mission, rationale, and criteria for success, function within the School of Medicine. Among these centers are the Brain Tumor Center of Excellence, Center for Biomedical Engineering, Center for Biomolecular Imaging, Center for Dermatology Research, Center for Healthcare Quality & Research, Center for Human Genomics, Center for Neurobehavioral Study of Alcohol, Center for Neurobiological Investigation of Drug Abuse, Center for Research in Obstetrics and Gynecology, Center for Voice and Swallowing Disorders, Comparative Medicine Clinical Research Center, Comprehensive Cancer Center of Wake Forest University, Comprehensive Epilepsy Center, Diabetes Care Center, General Clinical Research Center, Geriatric General Clinical Research Center, Hypertension and Vascular Disease Center, J. Paul Sticht Center on Aging (Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center), Maya Angelou Research Center on Minority Health, MICROMED: Resource Center for Electron Microscopy, N.C. Lions Clinical Research Division (WFU Eye Center), Roena Bullis Kulynych Dementia Research Care Center, and the Women’s Health Center of Excellence. Several other centers with a focus on research, education, clinical care, or a combination of the three also have been established at the institution.
Personnel at the Medical Center now number about 11,235. Nearly 2,950 students receive training annually through the Medical Center’s teaching programs. They include medical students, nursing students, nurse anesthesia students, biomedical graduate students, house officers, physician assistant students, and allied health students.