The American College of Physicians has awarded mastership status to
Robert L. Grissom, M.D., the first full-time chairman of the University
of Nebraska Medical Center’s internal medicine department and one of four
original full-time clinical faculty members at the Medical Center.
With more than 100,000 members, the ACP is the nation’s largest society
of physicians trained in internal medicine and its related subspecialties.
Dr. Grissom is only the second physician in Nebraska to achieve master
status in the ACP. Fred Paustian, M.D., professor in UNMC’s internal medicine
department, is the only other physician in the state to gain master status
in the ACP. He was awarded mastership in 1993.
Mastership is ACP’s highest level of membership. ACP fellows are nominated
for mastership by an awards committee and elected by the ACP’s Board of
Regents. With the addition of 38 ACP masters this year, the number of ACP
masters now stands at 324. According to ACP bylaws, master selection is
based on personal character, positions of honor or influence, contributions
toward furthering the purposes of the ACP, and/or eminence in practice
or medical research.
Dr. Grissom was previously named an ACP fellow in 1954. Dr. Grissom
became a full-time faculty member in 1953, coming to UNMC from the University
of Illinois, where he worked for seven years. Prior to this, UNMC had no
full-time clinical faculty, but instead used solely volunteer or part-time
faculty members from throughout the community. Dr. Grissom was chairman
of the internal medicine department from 1956 to 1970. Following this,
he worked in the cardiology division from 1970 to 1987, serving as acting
head of the division from 1970 to 1972. He retired in 1987 and was named
professor emeritus at that time, a position he continues to hold.
Today, Dr. Grissom, 80, continues to serve on the Admissions Committee
for the College of Medicine and also is a facilitator for a problem-based
learning group. In 1982, the internal medicine department named a conference
room on the fifth floor of University Hospital in honor of Dr. Grissom.
Michael Sorrell, M.D., the Grissom Professor of Medicine and a former chairman
of UNMC’s internal medicine department, was instrumental in getting the
conference room named after Dr. Grissom and speaks in glowing terms of
what Dr. Grissom has meant to the Medical Center.
"Dr. Grissom was a pioneer. He was the person who was responsible
for building a modern internal medicine program at UNMC. Prior to Dr. Grissom
coming here, we were on probation with the accreditation agency. We were
an academic sink hole," Dr. Sorrell said. "Dr. Grissom is a great
man of medicine in Nebraska. He’s one of the finest men I’ve ever met.
I consider him my role model. He is a man of impeccable principles in the
practice of medicine and the education of medical students. He lived those
principles and taught us all the moral values of life."
In addition to Dr. Grissom being awarded mastership status in the ACP,
several other UNMC internists were honored at the ACP’s recent national
convocation in Philadelphia. Rowen Zetterman, M.D., professor, internal
medicine, just completed a one-year term as chairman of the ACP Board of
Governors and is now serving as a member of the Board of Regents, the ACP’s
ultimate governing body.
Prior to his term on the Board of Governors, Dr. Zetterman served as
ACP governor for Nebraska. Two UNMC physicians — Wendy Adams, M.D., M.P.H.,
assistant professor, geriatrics, and Philip Bierman, M.D., associate professor,
oncology/hematology — were inducted as fellows in the ACP, while Arthur
Weaver, M.D., clinical professor in rheumatology, received the ACP Chapter
Laureate Award for Nebraska. John Hoesing, M.D., clinical associate professor
in internal medicine, is ACP governor for Nebraska and led Nebraska’s delegation
at the convocation.