Dr. Bruce Murphy received two doctoral degrees and completed his internal medicine residency and cardiology fellowship at UAMS in the 1980s. An early introduction to heart disease and cardiac catheterization during his training catapulted him into a successful career devoted to diagnosing and treating cardiovascular disease and educating the next generation of cardiologists. Below, he explains how training at UAMS prepared him for cutting-edge practice and for eventually founding and leading the Arkansas Heart Hospital.
Please tell us about your educational career at UAMS.
Dr. Murphy: I attended UAMS for medical school; however, I began as a graduate student in the Department of Pharmacology in 1975 and completed my Ph.D. in pharmacology in 1980. I was simultaneously in medical school and completed my M.D. in 1981. I then did an internal medicine residency from 1981 to 1984 and finished a general cardiology fellowship in 1986. At that time, the general cardiology fellowship was two years. It has since been extended to three years. It was discussed with me as well, but the third year would have been a year of research. As I had already done a Ph.D. dissertation in research, it was not felt to be necessary at that time.
Why did you stay at UAMS for residency and fellowship after medical school?
Dr. Murphy: First of all, I had a tremendous knowledge of and appreciation for some of the senior internal medicine physicians including Drs. Ackerman, Abernathy, and Bates, all of whom were intellectual giants at the time, which enticed me to stay. The fellowship program was an easy yes at the time as well. Again, there were some excellent senior staff there who made wanting to stay a strong desire.
Please describe your career path from the end of fellowship to the present.
Dr. Murphy: I entered private practice in 1986 at Little Rock Cardiology Clinic. I practiced general cardiology and then later interventional cardiology and then later peripheral vascular interventions. Most of my practice was at Baptist and St. Vincent until 1997 when we opened the Arkansas Heart Hospital. At that point, my full-time private practice was at Arkansas Heart Hospital.
How did your education and training at UAMS prepare you for a successful career? Did your UAMS training prepare you to be the CEO of Arkansas Heart Hospital?
Dr. Murphy: Well, I think that my training at UAMS was occurring at a time in which we were in the beginning stages of the “golden age of interventional cardiology.” It was during this period of time that new techniques were rapidly evolving including thrombolytic therapy, directed thrombolytic therapy, and eventually balloon angioplasty. The cardiology staff was very embracing, at the time, of these new techniques, and it certainly made it a lot easier for me to stay having great role models. As far as being a leader, the role of teaching, I think, is a tremendous role model for young students to see, and I saw a lot of it. I saw a lot of people who were teaching and managing as faculty and staff who were role models to me. That helped me develop my leadership skills.
Can you describe how you came to be involved with founding and ultimately leading Arkansas Heart Hospital?
Dr. Murphy: Well, as I mentioned earlier, I was practicing during what was the “golden age of interventional cardiology,” and we had all these new techniques and new devices such as rotational atherectomy, intravascular ultrasound, directional atherectomy, intracoronary stenting, etc. However, we simply did not have the infrastructure in place, as far as cath labs, ORs, and ICU beds, to allow us to expand what we were doing to the cardiology patients. We did, in fact, ask administrations at two of the private practice hospitals in Little Rock for help in this regard and they simply could not do it. They had too many other departments to take care of, and cardiology was not a priority. Because of that, we were forced to try and develop additional cath lab resources and then later additional OR resources. It finally occurred to us that we could solve almost all our problems by simply building a full new hospital, which is how Arkansas Heart Hospital came about.
Please tell us about the collaboration between UAMS and the Arkansas Heart Hospital with respect to cardiology education and training. How did this come about, and how is it mutually beneficial?
Dr. Murphy: In the early 1990s, interventional cardiology was expanding its treatment and diagnosis into peripheral vascular disease. I was probably one of the founding physicians in Arkansas to expand my practice from interventional cardiology into interventional peripheral vascular disease as well. Because of that, I tried to teach the fellows and actually brought fellows over from UAMS in a non-sanctioned way to get some experience managing total occlusions of the legs with lasers, etc. Actually, I requested from UAMS that Arkansas Heart Hospital be allowed to teach these fellows and sponsor a third fellow – one for the VA, one for UAMS, and one for Arkansas Heart Hospital. That has been our system since 2008. For the last 15 years, Arkansas Heart Hospital not only teaches all of the interventional cardiology fellows, but we also sponsor through salary, compensation, and benefits one of the interventional cardiology fellows. This is beneficial to Arkansas Heart Hospital because it requires that our staff teach. For you to teach something, you have to have a complete understanding of all of the nuances of it. It helps our staff physicians to be teachers, but also it allows us to see fresh, young minds that we might want to have a long-term relationship with.
What advice would you give to current cardiology fellows?
Dr. Murphy: My advice would be to develop as broad a skill set in interventional and peripheral vascular interventions as you can. That would require that you not only participate in a cardiology program, but also that you travel. You need to travel to other hospitals within America and other hospitals and conferences throughout the world. This addition to your education will greatly benefit your level of confidence and the number of tricks and “get out of trouble protocols” that you will be exposed to with international experience.
Do you have fond memories or stories from your time at UAMS that you would like to share?
The old Little Rock VA was really a great experience for most of the interns and fellows that was not completely reproduced by the new VA when it came over to the UAMS campus. I would tell you that one of the favorite doctor books, at the time, was The House of God. That book was so funny because it was so accurate about what happens in training in internal medicine. Everybody read that book before they started their intern year. I suspect all of the things mentioned in it are just as true today.
Are there faculty and staff at UAMS or the VA who were impactful in your training that you would like to recognize?
There certainly are. I think Dr. George Ackerman and Dr. Robert Abernathy were very powerful influences on me. Dr. Joe Bates was a very, very powerful influence on me, as well as Dr. Marvin Murphy, who was Chief of Cardiology at the VA, and Dr. Joe Franciosa, who was Chief of Cardiology at UAMS. Those were some of the more important staff. One who taught me how to do my first heart catheterization when I was a junior was Dr. Steve Hutchins. It was just a simple right heart catheterization, but by him allowing me to do that and teaching me how to do heart catheterizations, it was what addicted me to wanting to do procedures that help people from a vascular standpoint.