Individuals and Organizations Making The Ohio State University Medical Center
Great Through Philanthropy
Cummins Family Creates
Endowment in Allied Health
Phyllis, Joan and Linda Cummins are sisters who attended The Ohio State University together, sharing friends, football games and endless memories of campus life in Columbus. Unfortunately, Linda died in a home accident several years after graduating.
Phyllis Cummins Dyche and her husband Donald decided, with the support of the entire Cummins family, to establish an endowment as a tribute to Linda in the School of Allied Medical Professions. Phyllis and Donald both worked at Prudential Financial for many years, and cashed life insurance policies to begin the endowment. Prudential has a
corporate matching gift program, which matched the Dyches’ donation by 20 percent.
“We hope our gifts can demonstrate that even modest endowments can generate significant impact for research and for students,” Phyllis says. “We know that over time the endowment will grow through the University’s management and it will be a permanent resource for the school.”
Essig Gift Will Improve
Clinical Skills Training
The Ohio State University Medical Center’s Clinical Skills Education and Assessment Center, located in the Prior Health Sciences Library, uses simulation to help medical students and residents improve their technical skills and develop a warm and successful bedside manner. As part of their training, Ohio State medical students work with actors, or “standardized” patients, who share with them information about their aches and pains. Students’ interpersonal skills are evaluated as well as their diagnosis and treatment of these “patients.”
LeRoy Essig, MD ’69, of Fredericksburg, Va., knows the value of top-notch clinical training. A graduate of Ohio State’s College of Medicine and an oncologist in private practice, he says, “Most doctors in the United States are in the trenches like me. Those in research and teaching develop new procedures for us to use, but we need training to do them well. That’s where Ohio State excels.”
To support this hands-on experience and to honor his late wife Ann, a nurse and breast cancer survivor, Essig created an endowment that names Ohio State’s Patient Simulation Learning Lab in her memory. “My wife was a real advocate for quality patient care, so my goal was to fund an area that has to do with the interaction of the physician and the patient,” he says.
Essig’s investment in the Clinical Skills Center, which offers a Patient Simulation Lab and a Procedures Lab, will have a great impact on medical student and resident training while improving patient care and safety.
The Essigs’ son LeRoy Essig II, MD ‘99, an assistant professor of Pulmonary, Allergy, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine at The Ohio State University Medical Center, brings the gift full circle. He will soon teach in the skills lab bearing his mother’s name.
These stories were written by Mary Connolly and Terri Stone.
Correction: The Ohio State University and The Ohio State University Medical Center wish to apologize to Marie E. Sinsabaugh and her children and hereby retract all statements made by or attributed to Dr. Charles Sinsabaugh with regard to Ms. Sinsabaugh’s mental health and the mental health of her children in the Autumn 2009 issue of Discovery magazine. The statements made were not investigated for their accuracy and are untrue. We sincerely regret any embarrassment that we have caused by publishing these statements and publicly withdraw them.