The Department of Neurosciences at the Medical University of South Carolina

The Department of Neurosciences was created in November, 2004 by fusing the existing Departments of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Physiology/Neuroscience. As with all departments in academic Medical Centers, the primary goal for creating the department of Neurosciences is to promote human health. What makes this department unique amongst academic medical centers in the USA is that in order to best achieve the goal of promoting human health in diseases and injuries affecting the nervous system it was decided to merge two clinical departments with one basic research department. This divergence from the traditional departmental structure will best address an emerging crisis in health care identified by the National Institutes of Health. Namely, there is a shortfall and underperformance in the current training of research clinicians and the application of research discoveries to patient care. The new department of Neurosciences directly addresses this deficiency by merging a basic research Physiology/Neuroscience department with Neurology and Neurosurgery departments specializing in clinical care of brain disease. Combined, this department becomes the 5th largest Neurosciences department in the country in terms of NIH funding (FY 2003) and the only neuroscience department that places researchers and clinicians at each others side in an effort to transform the promise of cutting edge research into the reality of improved human health. Similarly, the close working relationship between clinicians and basic researchers provides the fertile environment necessary for training the next generation of clinician scientists that are so urgently needed to realize the health care opportunities emerging from the laboratory.