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Dr. Jonathan R. Hiatt became Director, Surgical Education in July 2004 upon the retirement of Dr. Ronald
K. Tompkins, who was one of the leading surgeons of our Department as well as the first full-time surgical
educator in the history of the Department of Surgery. Dr. Hiatt has begun an ambitious program to carry
on Dr. Tompkins' distinguished work in the education of residents and students and the continuing education
of faculty and staff.
Dr. Hiatt is a product of the UCLA training program and has spent his entire career on the UCLA faculty,
first at Harbor-UCLA, then as Director of the Trauma and Emergency Service at UCLA in the 1980's. From
1990 to 1999, Dr. Hiatt served as Vice Chairman of Surgery and Director, Surgical Residency Program and
Trauma Services at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, which is a UCLA-affiliated private institution. He
returned to UCLA in 2003, where his clinical activities included general surgery and surgical critical
care on the Liver Transplant Service. His bibliography includes publications in many areas of general
surgery, trauma, and transplantation, as well as two books. In July 2005, he was appointed Chief of
General Surgery and returned to active clinical practice on the Trauma and Emergency Surgery Service.
In 2005, Dr. Hiatt received a major grant from industry that will be utilized to address some of the
fundamental problems in modern surgical education. These include strengthening of the teaching mission;
improvement of resident education in the era of work hour restrictions; development of new educational
methods and paradigms; and innovation in the surgical education of medical students at all levels. The
educational role is central to our purpose at UCLA and inextricably linked to all of our activities as
surgeons in a great academic Department.
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