VCU Medical Center
The VCU Medical Center, formerly known as the Medical College of Virginia, is the medical campus of Virginia Commonwealth University, located in downtown Richmond, Virginia, United States. As MCV, VCU Medical Center merged with the Richmond Professional Institute in 1968 to create VCU. In the 1990s, the Medical College of Virginia Hospitals Authority was created to oversee MCV Hospitals. In 2004, the name of this authority was changed to the VCU Health System, and the MCV Hospitals and surrounding campus were named the VCU Medical Center. The authority oversees the employees and real estate occupied by the five schools within the VCU Medical Center. It was at this time that the MCV Campus moniker was created.
West Hospital houses various clinical, administrative, and support services of the hospitals of the VCU Medical Center; clinical, academic, and administrative units of the School of Medicine; and academic and administrative units of the School of Allied Health Professions. In addition to the adult hospital, Children's Hospital of Richmond at VCU is located on the campus. Today the VCU Medical Center is composed of the hospitals and five schools—College of Health Professions, School of Dentistry, School of Medicine, School of Nursing, School of Pharmacy—and is located on the MCV Campus, adjacent to the Virginia BioTechnology Research Park.
The VCU Medical Center
VCU Medical Center has 865 licensed beds with a total of 85,700 emergency room visits in 2012. There were 558,385 outpatient clinic visits and a total of 20,506 surgeries.Expansion
New construction
New Children's Hospital – The new children's tower, previously referred to as the "Wonder Tower" opened on April 30, 2023. The new facility will house 72 private rooms; an emergency department; expanded child life services; family amenities; additional operating rooms and imaging capabilities.Recently constructed
- Massey Cancer Center – An, $41.8 million building, with 72 research labs and a two-level, 109-car parking lot
- Critical Care Hospital – Central Virginia's only level-one trauma center, the 15-story Critical Care Hospital specializes in intensive care
- Medical Sciences Building II – a research lab
- W. Baxter Perkinson Jr Building – School of Dentistry. A addition to the School of Dentistry on Leigh Street that houses research, clinic and teaching space
- New School of Nursing – an additional of research and training space for the VCU nursing program
- MCV Campus Recreation Center – a addition to the Recreation and Aquatic Center
- Larrick Student Center – renovated MCV campus dining court
History
Founding
On December 1, 1837, the president and trustees of Hampden–Sydney College created a medical department to be located at Richmond.Founders of the college
- Richard Lafon Bohannan – Professor of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children
- Lewis Webb Chamberlayne – Professor of Materia Medica and Therapeutics
- John Cullen – Professor of Theory and Practice of Medicine
- Augustus Lockman Warner – Dean and Professor of Surgery and Surgical Anatomy
- Socrates Maupin – Professor of Chemistry and Pharmacy
- Thomas Johnson – Professor of Anatomy and Physiology
First year
The college began as the Medical Department of Hampden-Sydney College. There were forty-six students enrolled in the first class, which lasted from November 5, 1838 – April 4, 1839. Students paid $20 to the professors for each of the six courses.
1850–1861
The Medical Department of Hampden-Sydney College received an independent charter from the General Assembly in 1854, and became the Medical College of Virginia Shortly thereafter, in 1860, it transferred all its property to the Commonwealth and became a state institution. There had not been a separate hospital where patients could be housed within the college buildings since the beginning. A new hospital, known as the College Infirmary, was built at a cost of $22,336.57 and opened in April, 1861.Civil War
Soon the Civil War erupted, and the college found itself playing an important role in the education of Confederate surgeons and in the hospital care of sick and wounded military personnel. During the war, the school remained open, and it graduated a class every year throughout the conflict. The MCV is the only Southern medical school still in existence to have done so.1866–1882
For several years after the Civil War, the faculty included James Brown McCaw, a member of a family long prominent in the medical field, who had commanded a Confederate hospital. McCaw served as a professor, dean of the faculty, and president of the board of visitors. The youngest of McCaw's nine children, Walter McCaw, was gifted academically and completed his medical degree at the Virginia College of Medicine in 1882, when he was only nineteen.In 1867, the college's first outpatient clinic was established, when the faculty agreed to cooperate with the Freedmen's Bureau and the City of Richmond in the establishment of a "dispensary for the relief of the sick poor, both white and colored."
In the late 1800s, African-American janitor Chris Baker became notorious for obtaining cadavers for dissection by students. One case in 1898 was subject to an exposé by Richmond Planet publisher John Mitchell Jr. and included grisly sketches of the proceedings. Baker's success, however, led to one professor saying in 1898 that the school could be called "Chris Baker's College".
The University College of Medicine
A second medical school, the "College of Physicians and Surgeons", was founded by Hunter McGuire in 1893, just two blocks from the Egyptian Building. The new college was composed of three schools: medicine, dentistry, and pharmacy. The University College of Medicine was destined to have a lifespan of only twenty years as an independent institution. The Flexner Report of 1909 suggested that the two schools would be better off merging, which they then did in 1913, retaining the Medical College of Virginia name.1913 Rankings with Christopher Tompkins
Dean Tompkins said in his retirement speech in 1913, "From a school whose matriculants numbered, as I can remember it, 22 during the session and whose standing amongst medical colleges in the country was so insignificant that it was not worth noticing, the matriculants have increased to—in one session—as many as 306. In a recent table compiled in December 1911, from the reports of the Council on Medical Education of the American Medical Association, it was found that of all the medical colleges in the United States and taking them in the order in which their graduates passed the various medical examining boards, the Medical College of Virginia stood fourth; the order in which they came being, Rush, Johns Hopkins, Cornell, Medical College of Virginia, and about one hundred and forty behind them."Aborted consolidation with the University of Virginia
In 1920, a discussion that had gone on for years without resolution of the issues involved was revived. Repeatedly, the view had been expressed that the Medical College of Virginia and the University of Virginia Department of Medicine might well be consolidated with benefit both to the schools and to the public. In 1867, 1905, and 1913, the question had been raised; and, finally, in 1920 a serious study was undertaken. In reviewing appropriations, Governor Westmoreland Davis noted that Virginia was supporting two medical schools, seemingly in competition, and surmised that this might well be uneconomic, particularly at a time when money was tight.Acting on the Governor's recommendation, the General Assembly authorized a Commission on Medical Education. The commission made a thorough study that recommended that Virginia support only one medical school; that this school be in Richmond; that it be the Department of Medicine of the University of Virginia under the full and sole control of the Rector and Visitors of the university; and that the plan be effective upon the unconditional transfer of all Medical College of Virginia properties and assets to the Rector and Visitors of the university. The Board of Visitors of the Medical College of Virginia was in favor, and by resolution determined that the college would willingly embrace the plan should the commission's recommendations be accepted by the legislature.
Instead, the alumni of the university, under the leadership of Hugh H. Young, of Johns Hopkins Medical School, waged a campaign to preserve the medical school at Charlottesville. The report was approved overwhelmingly in the House but died by a 24-16 tally in the Senate. In view of the state's growth, the action of the Senate was fortunate. Had the report won approval, Virginia would have found herself today facing the need to establish another medical school, with a minimum price tag of 30 million dollars. The issue of consolidation was to rise again, in 1947, but only briefly, as the handwriting on the wall was by that time quite clear.
The Great Depression and expansion
The Great Depression struck the college with perhaps more force than in the case of some other institutions. MCV was struggling to secure funds without which specialized structures and trained personnel, both expensive, could not be had. Plans laid prior to 1930 with early fruition apparently possible had to be put aside, notably the projected laboratory and outpatient building. Salaries, never high, had to be cut.However, by 1941 the modern 600-bed, 18-story MCV Hospital was completed; the Egyptian Building had been completely reconstructed to provide up-to-date facilities for the departments of bacteriology and pathology and to create the 300-seat Simon Baruch Auditorium, in the Egyptian motif, named for Simon Baruch, class of 1862, whose distinguished son, Bernard M. Baruch, helped make the restoration possible. Also by 1941, new quarters were provided for the departments of physiology and pharmacology by adding a fourth story to McGuire Hall. In the brief span of five years, a remarkable program of physical expansion had been completed.
In 1945, a certificate in physical therapy program was created by Frances A. Hellebrandt