University of Vermont Professor of Surgery and cardiothoracic surgeon Bruce Leavitt, M.D., received the New England Surgical Society’s 2015 Nathan Smith Distinguished Service Award at the organization’s annual meeting in fall 2015.
Bruce Leavitt, M.D., with a young patient in Rwanda. (Courtesy photo)
University of Vermont Professor of Surgery and cardiothoracic surgeon Bruce Leavitt, M.D., received the New England Surgical Society’s 2015 Nathan Smith Distinguished Service Award at the organization’s annual meeting in fall 2015.
The award is named in honor of Nathan Smith, who helped develop the specialty of surgery and was instrumental in the establishment of the country’s first medical schools, including the UVM College of Medicine. According to the New England Surgical Society, he was born in 1762 in Rehoboth, Mass., and educated by his parents – a farmer-surveyor and midwife – as well as by Josiah Goodhue, a prominent surgeon of the upper Connecticut Valley, and at the Harvard Medical School near the time of its inception. He also completed eight months of study in Edinburgh, Scotland and London, England. In addition to developing an extensive surgical practice in the upper Connecticut Valley, Smith was a major force in the establishment and development of Dartmouth Medical School and was subsequently appointed to the faculty of the new Yale Medical School, where he was a surgeon, teacher and practitioner. He also directly contributed to the establishment of a medical school at Bowdoin College.
Leavitt, who joined the UVM Department of Surgery in 1988, is a 1981 alumnus of the UVM College of Medicine. After receiving his medical degree, he completed residencies in general surgery at Maine Medical Center and in cardiopulmonary surgery at SUNY Health Sciences Center in Syracuse, N.Y. From 2010 to 2013 he served as vice chairman of the UVM Medical Group Board and since 2014, he has been Faculty Marshal for the UVM College of Medicine Commencement. In addition to his clinical service, he teaches UVM medical students in the Foundations level and the Surgery Clerkship, participates in the Senior Surgery Major Boot Camp, and is an active advisor to surgical residents. He served as President of the Vermont Chapter of the American College of Surgeons from 2009 to 2011, was Vice President of the New England Surgical Society in 2008-09, and has been editor of their newsletter since 2006.
A member of the Northern New England Cardiovascular Research Consortium, Leavitt has been instrumental in translational multicenter studies involving all the major medical centers in the region and also engaged in several translational multidisciplinary research projects at UVM. He has over 110 publications, abstracts and book chapters and is a sought-after presenter at local, national and international meetings. Since 1992, he has been on eight surgical missions, including Team Heart Cardiac Surgery missions to Rwanda in 2013, 2014 and 2015, and Doctors Without Borders (MSF) missions to Sri Lanka in 2010 and Nigeria in 2009. In 2011, he earned the Outstanding Alumni Award for Service to Medicine and Community from the UVM College of Medicine Alumni Association