MACON/SAVANNAH/COLUMBUS – Mercer University School of Medicine (MUSM) Dean Jean R. Sumner, M.D., F.A.C.P., recently announced the appointment of Jeffrey M. Ignatoff, M.D., as vice-chair of pathology and clinical sciences education.
Dr. Ignatoff joined MUSM in 2010 as an associate professor on the Savannah campus. He is highly experienced in medical student and medical resident training and has served as co-chair of Block 4 in the pre-clinical curriculum since 2016, overseeing gastrointestinal, hematology/oncology, endocrinology and reproduction modules.
He also holds an adjunct appointment as associate professor in the Department of Surgery at HCA Memorial University Medical Center in Savannah, where he serves on the Institutional Review Board.
Well known to MUSM as an outstanding educator, Dr. Ignatoff is a graduate of Hiram College and Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Following a surgical internship at Albert Einstein College of Medicine affiliated hospitals in New York, he completed surgical and urology residency training at Northwestern University McGaw Medical Center in Chicago before serving two years of active duty with the U.S. Air Force as a general surgeon.
His professional career in urology practice spanned more than three decades in the Chicago area, where he headed the urology division at Evanston Northwestern Healthcare, a primary affiliate of the Department of Urology at Northwestern University.
Dr. Ignatoff has authored or co-authored more than 30 publications focused on urologic oncology and served as active investigator for the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group. His recent translational research studies involve detection of circulating prostate cancer cells in men undergoing treatment for prostate cancer.
“We are delighted Dr. Ignatoff has accepted this important position and will continue his excellent work in a new role,” said Dr. Sumner.
About Mercer University School of Medicine (Macon, Savannah and Columbus)
Mercer University’s School of Medicine was established in 1982 to educate physicians and health professionals to meet the primary care and health care needs of rural and medically underserved areas of Georgia. Today, a majority of graduates practice in the state of Georgia, and Mercer leads the nation in those who are practicing in rural or medically underserved areas. Mercer medical students benefit from a problem-based medical education program that provides early patient care experiences. Such an academic environment fosters the early development of clinical problem-solving and instills in each student an awareness of the place of the basic medical sciences in medical practice. The School opened a full four-year campus in Savannah in 2008 at Memorial University Medical Center. In 2012, the School began offering clinical education for third- and fourth-year medical students in Columbus. Following their second year, students participate in core clinical clerkships at the School’s primary teaching hospitals: Medical Center, Navicent Health in Macon; Memorial University Medical Center in Savannah; and Piedmont Columbus Regional Hospital and St. Francis Hospital in Columbus. The School also offers master’s degrees in family therapy, preclinical sciences and biomedical sciences and a Ph.D. in rural health sciences.
