The Bethesda Chronicles, Part 3: The Teaching Hospital

Story by André B. Sobocinski, Historian

U.S. Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery

Education and training has always been—and remains—a significant part of Bethesda’s story.

Each year thousands of uniformed personnel come to Bethesda where they embark on medical and dental residencies, take classes at the Navy Leader & Professional Development Command (NMLPDC) and Naval Postgraduate Dental School (NPDS) while others attend medical school and graduate programs at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS).

As far back as the 1940s, Bethesda has been an unparalleled leader in graduate medical training and helping to prepare newly commissioned officers for board eligibility and certification and accreditation.

In Sep.1945, Bethesda became one of the first military hospitals selected to host the residencies, among them pathology, psychiatry and radiology which would be the first residency programs of their kind in the Navy. Other residencies would soon follow, and today the medical center is home to some 57 distinct Graduate Medical Education (GME) programs.

Navy Medical School (NMS):

From 1942 until 1971, the centerpiece of Navy medical education and training was the Naval Medical School. The school had existed at various times in the nineteenth century both in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and later in Brooklyn, New York. On May 27, 1902, the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery (BUMED) reestablished the school at the Naval Museum of Hygiene, then located at the Old Observatory Hill in Foggy Bottom, Washington, D.C. It remained at this location until relocating to Bethesda on Feb. 5, 1942.

Until World War II, the new school was the entry point for almost all newly commissioned medical officers, offering a basic course of instruction on Navy Medicine which was designed to:

–instruct naval medical officers in certain fields of medicine important to the Navy (notably tropical medicine, preventive medicine and traumatology);
–provide further training in some of the basic sciences with a view towards enabling medical officers to meet the requirements of the specialty boards;
–furnish refresher training to bring the medical officer up to date in current methods of diagnosis and therapy; and
–introduce newly commissioned officers to Navy medical protocol and general duties.

Over the first decades of the twentieth century the Naval Medical School earned an international reputation for its course of instruction in tropical medicine and parasitology. Under the tutelage of such tropical medicine trailblazers like Edward Stitt, James Gatewood, Charles St. Butler and others, medical students investigated parasitic disease vectors, prevention techniques and clinical laboratory procedures. The school’s graduates would go on to vaccinate the native populations of American Samoa and Guam against smallpox in 1903 and 1905, respectively; help develop and administer anti-typhoid vaccinations ultimately stamping out the disease in the Navy and Marine Corps (1912); partake in numerous seminal international relief efforts working with civilian populations throughout multiple continents; and serve as the Navy’s first-line of defense against a host of deadly diseases, many of which few Western physicians had ever before seen in the first decades of the twentieth century.

Over the ensuing decades, the size and scope of the Navy Medical School evolved beyond the realm of tropical disease research. Beginning in 1917, the school provided advance laboratory courses for enlisted medical personnel (considered the first “C” school program); and by the 1920s offer specialized course work for Navy nurses. In World War II, the school trained more than 2,500 officers and enlisted personnel in epidemiology, malariology, tropical medicine, laboratory procedures, as well as pathology, photofluorography, and even medical art.

The strength of the school was always its ability to evolve and expand curriculum to ensure students had the relevant knowledge and skillsets by the Navy. By the 1950s students received special instruction on tropical medicine, cold weather medicine, submarine medicine, nutrition, venereal diseases, parasitic diseases, virology, aviation medicine, dental problems and dental research, atomic, biological and chemical warfare, nuclear medicine and radioisotopes, trauma, and mass casualty management.

BUMED redesignated the Naval Medical School as the Naval Medical Training Institute (NMTI) in 1971. NMTI, in turn, became the Naval Health Sciences Education and Training Command (HSETC) in July 1974. Over the next four decades the mission, scope and name of HSETC would continually evolve. Today, although the Navy Medical School and HSETC names are long gone, the mantle and their legacies is carried by the Naval Medical Leader and Professional Development Command (NMLPDC), an echelon-4 activity responsible for “developing leaders and their professional careers.”

Naval Postgraduate Dental School (NPDS):

The Naval Dental School—now known as the Naval Postgraduate Dental School (NPDS)—was founded by the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery (BUMED) in 1923 as a “department” of the Naval Medical School in Washington, D.C. In those seminal years, the dental school provided instruction for newly commissioned dental officers as well as hospital corpsmen who represented the Navy’s first dental technicians. The school also operated an active prosthetic laboratory, a five-chair general dentistry clinic, a two-chair prosthodontic clinic, and a prosthodontic laboratory, all rare among dental schools at the time.

From the very beginning, NPDS earned a stellar reputation for its training capabilities and quality of instruction. In 1924, Rear Adm. Edward Stitt, the Navy’s 16th Surgeon General and the former head of the Naval Medical School, stated that “no school or laboratory in the country is better equipped for our work and we have endeavored to obtain from the leading dental colleges and clinics the best that they have had to offer to make up the courses to be given.”

Students in those early years received instruction in “medical department duties,” bacteriology, dental prosthesis, clinical dentistry, preventive dentistry, dental radiology, minor oral surgery, general pathology, hematology, and metallurgy. Its plankowner instructors included Lt. Cmdrs. Harry Harvey and Joseph Mahoney, early leaders in the nascent Dental Corps; and Lt. Cmdr. William Darnall, Sr., who served as the first head of the school.

Over the course of its history, NPDS has organizationally fallen under the Naval Hospital/Naval Medical School (1923-1936); Naval Medical Center Washington, D.C. (1936-1942); National Naval Medical Center (1942-1975); National Naval Dental Center/National Naval Regional Dental Center (1975-1983; 1989-2004); Naval Dental Clinic, Bethesda (1983-1989); National Naval Medical Center (2004-2009); Navy Medicine Manpower, Personnel, Training and Education Command (Navy Medicine MPT&E) (2009-2012); and the Navy Medicine Professional Development Center (NMPDC)/Navy Medicine Leader & Professional Development Center (2012-Present).

Since Feb.1923, when the school launched its first general postgraduate course, advanced education has remained one of its greatest strengths. Through the years the curriculum has continued to evolve and expand to meet the dental and operational needs of the Navy. In 1949, NPDS initiated the first specialized courses or residencies. Today NPDS oversees over 30 world class continuing education programs in dentistry and seven fully accredited postgraduate dental residency programs.

Medical Administration Schools:

The new roles and responsibilities for hospital corps officers and warrant officers in World War II came a need for specialized training courses and professional development. BUMED met this need by establishing the Navy Hospital Corps Officers School (NHCOS) at the National Naval Medical Center in 1942. NHCOS provided fulltime in-service training to commissioned officers, warrant officers and senior enlisted personnel serving in the supply and administration fields. The school specialized in courses in financial management/accounting, leadership, naval law, public speaking, welfare and recreation, and food management.

In 1945, the NHCOS was redesignated the Naval School of Hospital Administration (NSHA); and in March 1970, NSHA was renamed the Naval School of Health Care Administration (NSHCA) to reflect its expanded curriculum and responsibilities. Four years later, it was reorganized under the Health Sciences Education and Training Command (HSETC, formerly the Naval Medical School). It was renamed the Naval School of Health Sciences (NSHS) Bethesda in 1977. During an education and training restructuring beginning in 1995, BUMED disestablished HSETC and its command functions were split between headquarters and NSHS Bethesda.

On Aug. 13, 2002, NSHS Bethesda was renamed the Naval Medical and Education Training Command (NMETC) and, on Oct. 1, 2006, BUMED renamed it the Navy Medicine Manpower Personnel Training and Education Command (NMMPT&E). In Jan. 2012, it was renamed the Navy Medicine Professional Development Center (NMPDC) and made a subordinate command of the Naval Medical Education Training Command (now known as the Naval Medical Forces Support Command).

Today, the Naval Medical Leader and Professional Development Command (NMLPDC) comprises components of the Naval Medical School and NSHS legacy institutions and serves as a parent command for the NPDS. It serves as the cornerstone of Navy Medicine’s professional and leader development education and training enterprise, building critical competencies to support the warfighter’s operational requirements.

Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS):

Since the 1970s, the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS) has been THE name in federal medical education. And today, USUHS is the ONLY federal health sciences university and medical school in the nation.

The school was founded by the Uniformed Services Health Professionals Revitalization Act of 1971, a law that authorized the school as well as the Armed Forces Health Professions Scholarship Program. The law also stipulated that the school would be built “within 25 miles of the nation’s capital.”

Although the cornerstone of USUHS has been its medical school, in the ensuing years the school has expanded to include the Daniel K. Inouye Graduate School of Nursing (1993), the Postgraduate Dental College (2010), and College of Allied Health Sciences (2016).

Today, the impact of its graduates on military medicine is profound. About 25 percent of all active military physicians are graduates from the USUHS School of Medicine; 65 percent of advanced practice nurses are graduates from its School of Nursing; and 20 percent of active-duty military dentists are either Postgraduate Dental College students, graduates or faculty. Among the school’s eminent graduates include the last three Navy Surgeons General—Vice Adm. C. Forrest Faison, Rear Adm. Bruce Gillingham, and Rear Adm. Darin Via.

Sources:

Annual Report of the Surgeon General, U.S. Navy to the Secretary of the Navy for Fiscal Year 1923. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1923.

Annual Report of the Surgeon General, U.S. Navy to the Secretary of the Navy for Fiscal Year 1924. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1924.

Bureau of Medicine and Surgery (u.p. 1946). “National Naval Medical School.” Administrative History of the U.S. Medical Department in World War II.

Curreri, A.R. (April 1975). The Role of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. Military Medicine, 140 (4).

The Dental Corps of the United States Navy: A Chronology, 1912-1987 (1987). 75th Dental Corps Anniversary Committee, Inc.

“Education and Training Restructuring.” (May-June 1995). Navy Medicine Magazine, Vol 86.

Gray, D. (2017). Many Specialties, One Corps: A Pictorial History of the U.S. Navy Medical Service Corps (2nd Edition). Brookfield, MO: Donning Company Publishers.

Uniformed Services University (n.d). Military Readiness, Accessed from: https://www.usuhs.edu/military-readiness#beyond

Prospectus for Basic Course in Naval Medicine (1952). Naval Medical School-National Naval Medical Center.

Sobocinski, A.B. (2023 Feb 2). Flagship of Navy Dental Education Marks 100 Years. DVIDS. Accessed from: https://www.dvidshub.net/news/437706/flagship-navy-dental-education-marks-100-years

Stitt, E.R. (March 1923). Letter about Naval Dental School. The Military Dental Journal, Vol. VI (1).

Velez, E. Naval Medical Leader and Professional Development Command. Medicine and the Military, 17 May 2022. Accessed from: https://www.medicineandthemilitary.com/relevant-articles/naval-medical-leader-and-professional-development-command