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Vital Signs

New emeriti segue into part-time pursuits

By Laura Stephenson Carter

Two longtime members of the DMS faculty—who've tallied 55 years at Dartmouth between them—were recently named to emeritus status.

Oxman: Dr. Thomas Oxman, the director of geriatric psychiatry at DHMC since 1988, has no intention of giving up his professional activities just yet. Two days a week, he'll continue to serve as medical director—a position he's held since 1996—at the Glencliff Home for the Elderly near New Hampshire's MountMoosilauke.He's also the managing partner of a company that consults with health-care organizations on managing depression in primary-care settings. And he plans to travel to see family and friends.

After graduating from Dartmouth College in 1971, Oxman earned his M.D. at the University of Colorado, then did residencies at DHMC and at Mount Zion Medical Center in San Francisco. During his training, he studied with the famous developmental psychologist Erik Erikson.

From 1980 to 1983, Oxman worked at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center as the director of behavioral medicine services in a pain control center. Then he joined the DMS faculty and later established the section of geriatric psychiatry as well as a geriatric psychiatry fellowship. He also played a key role in keeping the Glencliff Home, which provides care to elderly people with mental illness, from being closed. Known for his studies of geriatric psychiatry, he is secretary- treasurer-elect of the American Association of Geriatric Psychiatry and a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. A

New emeriti: Young, left, and Oxman.

paper he published in 1995—on the impact of spirituality and faith on healing in older patients—still pops up in the national media every so often. In 2001, for instance, Readers Digest reported that "patients comforted by their faith had three times the chance of being alive six months after open-heart surgery than patients who found no comfort in religion." The attention that paper got, Oxman says, was "my Andy Warhol 15 minutes of fame."

Young: Dr. William Young, an ob-gyn, has retired from clinical practice but says he's still got three "jobs"—two involving international health and the third "pure fun."

Young and his wife, Sarah, helped build and now volunteer at a clinic in Lwala,

That paper was "my Andy Warhol 15 minutes of fame," says Oxman.

Kenya, that was started by two Dartmouth College graduates—Milton and Fred Ochieng, natives of Lwala—who are now medical students at Vanderbilt. Young also works with the Dartmouth-Kosovo Alliance for Healthy Newborns Project, an outgrowth of the DMS-Kosovo initiative, which was begun in 2001 to help restore the health-care systemdevastated by the Bosnian conflict.

Young's "pure fun job" is one he's been doing for many years—helping organize Hanover's annualOccomPond Party, a winter event that includes building snow sculptures, cutting ice from the pond, and playing silly games that Young invents. He promises that in 2008, "Penguin Bowling will join the Couch Potato Race and the Banathalon."

Young did his undergraduate work at Miami University in Ohio and earned hisM.D. at the University of Pittsburgh in 1970. He did a surgical internship at Royal Victoria Hospital inMontreal, a stint with the U.S. Public Health Service, and his obgyn residency at McGill. He came to Dartmouth in 1976.

He's worked as a clinician, researcher, and teacher. He also helped produce an award-winning film on an obstetrical complication called shoulder dystocia, in which the baby's shoulder gets caught on the mother's pubic bone during delivery. "After 12 years," he says, "Shoulder Dystocia is still the best-selling video at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists."


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