Current Mailing Address                 

Bruce Cleeremans, MD

NervePro Medical Corp

15825 Laguna Canyon Road

Suite 202

Irvine, CA 92618

949-753-1882

F: 949-727-3365

 

Present Activity Status: Working

Tell us about your community activities:

 

Family Status: Married, a son age 24 he graduated from UC Santa Barbara in economics, and a daughter age 20 who is a junior at San Francisco State University in a nursing track

 

What path has your career taken since your residency?  Include military service, private practice, academic career, teaching and research accomplishments.

 

Came to California to work with Bill Hornstein (U of M neurology program), then in group practice 1984-2001.   Now I am in a solo practice including performing clinical trials in neurology and sleep disorders.  Previously did volunteer faculty work at University of California Irvine

 

We are interested in anecdotes and experiences from your residency years.  Include interactions among fellow residents and teaching staff.

 

I remember Dr M. Ramirez with his teaching rounds at ST Paul Ramsey.  Going up to 9E and always looking for "Big Red" our voluptuous red haired nurse; (she took the comments as complementary).

 

The resident's Christmas party at NW Racquet club when the temperature was -80 windchill.  The water pipe broke preventing the tennis players from showering, and most of the cars refused to start when it came time to go home.

 

Dr Cohen, while a resident was discussing his future plans on placing a nose strip to prevent snoring, and I told him it wouldn't work as most of the snoring and apnea was from the posterior pharynx.  Needless to say he didn't tip me off on buying breathe right strip stock.

 

I remember getting into an ambulance to transport critically ill patients to the private hospital in St. Paul to get EMI scans in the days where most places relied on the angiogram, lumbar puncture, and EEG to get all diagnostic material.

 

When an intern on the cardiology service, I pointed out to the nurses who were excited about the patient that was continually going in an out of a fib-flutter pattern that he was really a drowsy Parkinson’s patient who's tremor was coming and going as he slept and awakened.

 

When presenting a patient in cardiology I described him as having "organic heart syndrome" to point out the stupidity of all confused patients as having "organic brain syndrome".

 

Share your thoughts regarding the changes in medicine since your residency.  In your opinion, is Neurology positioned well for the future? 

 

The worst gap in the neurology program was lack of clinical exposure for common diseases that made up the greatest part of our future practices.  Dr. Gumnit offered to have me follow him in the clinic once weekly and this turned out to be very valuable when going into practice.

 

Neurology is an exciting field, although not very economical to physicians without procedures to perform or who live in states that have a heavy HMO population.  It will be a field in high demand in the future, as the baby boomer's retire, but keeping the deficit ridden government to reimburse reasonably will remain a problem as long as most of the money goes to imaging, hospitals, and the drug companies.