Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Lake Mead graduates first intern class

With increasing lawsuits and soaring premiums for medical malpractice insurance, many doctors say they are pulling out of the Las Vegas Valley. But a handful of young doctors at Lake Mead Hospital and Medical Center say they are ready to fill the ranks.

The hospital honored its first class of six interns Sunday at a special luncheon at Lawry's The Prime Rib restaurant.

The six graduates -- Dr. Stephanie Casalman, Dr. Babak Ghadishah, Dr. Layne Hermansen, Dr. Victor Mandapat, Dr. David Perz and Dr. Eric Wikler -- are all pioneers for the Lake Mead postgraduate program, director of medical education Dr. Alesia Wagner said.

They spent the two years before the internship began -- their last two years of medical school -- observing at hospitals across the country. They started practicing their new skills at Lake Mead Hospital last summer as interns.

For the next two years the doctors will practice as residents to finish their formal training. Five of the six will continue that training at Lake Mead Hospital. Only one is leaving the state.

Wagner admired their commitment to training and practicing in Las Vegas at a time when "medicine had taken a hit."

"That they and we keep going despite all the personal struggles shows the commitment to medicine that all of the physicians in the community have," Wagner said.

The medical educational division of Lake Mead Hospital was started three years ago as a way to bring young doctors into the Las Vegas Valley.

"What better way to recruit physicians than to grow your own?" Wagner said, adding that 70 percent of physicians stay within 70 miles of where they train.

The program started with medical school students, primarily from California, serving rotations at the hospital in their third and fourth years. Lake Mead Hospital gained accreditation for its internship and residency program last year.

Five of the graduating interns will continue at the hospital in the osteopathic family practice and internal medicine residency programs and plan to have their own clinic at the hospital open by August. The clinic will be one of the many hands-on experiences the program offers its new residents.

"It's like having our own practice," Wikler said. "If I meet someone on the street, I'll be able to hand them my card and tell them to come see me at the clinic."

Nevada's medical malpractice insurance crisis has done little to deter the hopes of the young doctors, as most plan to work here after their residencies. They said they expect to avoid the major price hikes in insurance, because their chosen specialties of general family practice or internal medicine are not high-risk specialties like trauma and OB/GYN that have been hard-hit by the malpractice crisis.

"It's affected us to a point, but hopefully it is going to get better," Ghadishah said.

Only Mandapat doesn't plan to remain in the Las Vegas Valley. He will finish his residency in Phoenix for financial reasons because Arizona state law allows him to practice as a physician in addition to his residency.

"Residents are not allowed to moonlight here," Mandapat said. His pending student loans were a major factor in deciding to transfer, he said.

The rest of the residents hope to open or join practices in Las Vegas after they finish their residencies.

"This is a great place," Hermansen said. "There are a lot of opportunities here, and there is a lot of need for good primary care doctors."

Being the first class at Lake Mead Hospital gave the graduates other opportunities, as well.

Without residents above them, the interns were much more involved in doing actual procedures than most first-year interns are, they said.

"As a new program there were a lot of opportunities to really learn under the attendees and have lots of hands-on experiences," Perz said.

The excitement of laying the foundation for a new program also drew many of the doctors into the Lake Mead program.

"We got to create some traditions," Hermansen said. "In a lot of older medical programs everything is handed down to you as 'this is how things work here.' We got to say how we wanted things created."

Now they'll also get to work with the new class of interns coming in.

"I'm really looking forward to having people underneath us," Casalman said.

Because her class was "pushed into the fire" with the new program, she said, the residents will be able to serve as mentors to the new interns. She doesn't plan, however, on holding their hands.

"They'll have to learn by the fire a little bit, right?" Casalman said.

archive