Historic Legacy: Early Years of the King-Drew Medical Complex by Arthur W. Fleming, MD
Editor’ s Note: This journal article about the early development of the King-Drew Medical Center is an excerpt taken from“ Martin Luther King, Jr. General Hospital and the Charles R. Drew Postgraduate Medical School,” originally published in A Century of Black Surgeons, The USA Experience. Claude H. Organ, Jr., Author, Margaret M. Koshiba, Editor. 1987, Transcript Press.
Dr. Arthur Fleming- 1985
Residents and Faculty, Department of Surgery, 1985
Organization of the Department Of Surgery
From the beginning, the development of the Department of Surgery at the King-Drew Medical Center was organized along traditional lines and was composed of co-equal divisions, i. e., Cardiothoracic, General Surgery, Neurosurgery, Ophthalmology, Oral Surgery, Orthopedics, Otolaryngology, and Urology. In 1975 Emergency Services was added to the department as a division. The chairperson of the department originally had no primary responsibility for the line management of any division. Otolaryngology became a separate department in 1976, and the Emergency Room Division became a separate department in 1980.
The physical plant and facilities available to the Department consisted of ninety-nine beds in three units, plus thirty surgical beds in the Department of Pediatrics. The operating suites consisted of six major operating rooms, a fifteen-bed post-anesthesia recovery room, and twelve-bed surgical intensive care unit.
Faculty Recruitment
M. Alfred Haynes, M. D., became KDMC President / Dean in 1979. He arrived at KDMC in November 1969, as one of the first department chairpersons to serve, in Family Practice and Community Medicine. At the time, he summarized the recruitment problems as follows: inadequate salaries, limited private practice options, inadequate equipment, stage of institutional development, and restricted case-mix. The detailed memo addressing these challenges was submitted in December 1985, was well documented, and effectively presented the key operational issues.
Early Faculty Recruited by Joseph L. Alexander, MD
Dr. Joseph L. Alexander was the first chairperson of the Department of Surgery at KDMC. From 1971 through 1975, Dr. Alexander experienced success in recruiting a total of eighteen full-time faculty. A significant amount of clinical service support was provided by part time community-based surgeons.
Dr. Mary Ann Lou, a Catholic nun, was the first surgeon hired by Dr. Alexander. She began at Martin Luther King, Jr. Hospital on December 1, 1971, four months before the hospital opened. Dr. Lou had graduated from the University of Toronto in 1959 and received her MD degree from St. Louis University School of Medicine in 1964. She served her internship and residency training at the Queen of Angels Hospital in Los Angeles, followed by a fellowship in thoracic and cardiovascular surgery with The Brewer Medical Foundation.
CDU College of Medicine | PG. 10