“It's A Bargain” Thrift Shop - Orthopaedic Hospital

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Taking Orthopaedic
Education to New Levels
By James V. Luck, Jr., MD • Chief Executive Officer and Medical Director • Los Angeles Orthopædic Hospital
This is an incredibly exciting time
to be working in orthopaedics.
For nearly 100 years, we at
Orthopædic Hospital have been
committed to improving care for
people with all types of orthopaedic problems
through patient care, research and education.
Today, orthopaedic surgery represents one of
the most competitive residencies across the
United States. By combining the extraordinary
academic credentials of both UCLA and
Orthopædic Hospital, I believe that we soon
will have the nation’s most sought-after orthopaedic
residency.
Education, of course, has long been part
of the core mission of Orthopædic Hospital,
along with providing charity care and advancing
scientific research. Our medical residency
program began with just a handful of residents
in the 1940s under the guidance of our
founder, Charles LeRoy Lowman, MD; Alvia
Brockway, MD; and Ward Rowland, MD.
When my father, J. Vernon
Luck Sr., MD, became
medical director in
1955, the residency
program was down to a
single resident. Because one of my father’s priorities
was education, he built one of the most
robust and sought-after training programs in
orthopaedics nationally.
Some people have said he almost singlehandedly
reinvented professional medical
education. He challenged medical students
and residents to be more than what he termed
“surgical technicians.” He developed the
Orthopaedic Resident Physician-In-Training
Examination used in U.S. orthopaedic residency
programs to assist residents and their
professors in identifying gaps in their knowledge
and assure uniform high standards.
After my father completed his
tenure in 1967, the residency
program continued along
a similar path until Augusto
Sarmiento, MD was named
medical director.
Dr. Sarmiento was also the chairman of
the Department of Orthopaedics at the University
of Southern California, which oversaw
the Los Angeles County residency program.
He combined that program with the OH residency
under the auspices of USC. Orthopædic
Hospital continued to play a significant role in
the training of these residents but no longer
had responsibility for the administration of
the program as a whole.
In the first years of the 1990s under the
administration of Blair C. Filler, MD, director
of Medical Education, other residencies began