Belsole among nine medical dean candidates

A search committee for the vacant position of dean of USF’s College of Medicine will pare finalists to between four and six before bringing candidates to campus for interviews next week.

The committee has nine candidates including interim Dean Robert Belsole. The finalists will begin interviews on June 24. Other candidates include:

Neal Cohen, vice dean of academic affairs, University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine.

Glenn Davis, dean, College of Human Medicine, Michigan State University.

Leonard Feld, medical director, pediatric service line, Morristown (N.J.) Memorial Hospital, and medical director, Goryeb Children’s Hospital.

Paul Katz, vice president for academic and research affairs and chief medical officer, Miami Sinai Medical Center and Miami Heart Institute.

Stephen Klasko, dean, Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia.

Alan Miller, associate senior vice president for health sciences, Tulane University.

John O’Connell, physician in chief at Detroit Medical Center and chairman of the department of internal medicine at Wayne State University.

Valerie Parisi, chairwoman, department of obstetrics and gynecology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The position was made vacant when former dean Robert Daugherty resigned in October 2003 after USF President Judy Genshaft made him return campaign checks for a congressional candidate he solicited from medical school staff.

Other problems made public recently have brought the college under scrutiny. The school’s anesthesiology department was placed on probation last week by its national accrediting agency as a result of claims of patient negligence and a lack of supervision for student residents at Tampa General Hospital. Just days later, it was announced that a pair of chairmen, Robert Christensen of the pediatrics department and Robert Clark of the radiology department, were leaving their positions to pursue other opportunities.

Johns Hopkins professor joins USF pediatric team

The college will soon welcome one prominent new doctor.

The doctor, Charles Paidas, director of pediatric trauma at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, comes with a high-ranking reference in the college – interim dean Robert Belsole, his brother-in-law.

USF skipped its usual search process before offering Paidas a job after Belsole brought his name up, the St. Petersburg Times reported. But Ron Hytoff, president and CEO of Tampa General, told the Times it was a sense of urgency, not Paidas’ relationship to the interim dean, that convinced the university to bypass the search process and offer him a job.

Hytoff also said Tampa General was too dependent on community pediatric surgeons who also work elsewhere, saying this could create conflicts if surgeons also had cases at other facilities.

Paidas told the Times that he decided to seek another job because he was eager to head a pediatric surgery program, something he said was unlikely at Johns Hopkins since his supervisor there is unlikely to leave soon.

Belsole, who said he did not play a part in the decision to hire Paidas, told the Times that, should the pediatric surgery program be successful, a search would be conducted to find a permanent faculty member for the position.