Vineet Chopra, MD, MSc, FHM, is associate professor of medicine and chief of the Division of Hospital Medicine at Michigan Medicine and the VA Ann Arbor (Michigan) Health System. A career hospitalist, Dr. Chopra’s research is dedicated to improving the safety of hospitalized patients through prevention of hospital-acquired complications. His work focuses on identifying and preventing complications associated with central venous catheters with a particular emphasis on peripherally inserted central catheters (PICCs).
Dr. Vineet Chopra
Dr. Chopra is the recipient of numerous teaching and research awards including the 2016 Kaiser Permanente Award for Clinical Teaching, the Jerome W. Conn Award for Outstanding Research in the Department of Medicine, the 2016 Society of Hospital Medicine Award for Excellence in Research, and the 2014 McDevitt Award for Research Excellence. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles and has served as associate editor for the American Journal of Medicine and Journal of Hospital Medicine.
At what point in your education/training did you decide to practice hospital medicine? What about hospital medicine appealed to you?
I think I knew very early – toward the middle of my intern year – that I wanted to be a hospitalist. There was much that drew me to the field. First, I loved being in the inpatient setting. The tempo of work, the unexpected nature of what may come next, and the opportunity to truly have an impact on a patients life at their time of greatest need appealed to me. I wasn’t as inclined towards the procedural fields and also loved the cognitive aspects of general medicine – doing the work up on a difficult diagnosis or medically managing a patient with acute coronary syndrome came naturally. I found myself loving the work so much so that it didn’t feel like work. And the rest was history!
What is your current role at Michigan Medicine?
I started at Michigan Medicine in 2008 as a full-time clinician taking care of patients on direct care and resident services. After 3 years of clinical work, I decided it was time to hone in on a specific skill set and went back to a research fellowship.
I become Michigan’s first fellow in hospital medicine – the guinea pig – for what would turn out to be one of the best decisions in my life. After finishing fellowship, I switched my focus from clinical work to research and rose up the ranks to receive tenure as an associate professor of medicine. After attaining tenure, I was among a handful of people in the nation who had success in both the research and the clinical arenas and leadership opportunities began to come my way.
I was fortunate to be recruited as the inaugural division chief of hospital medicine at Michigan Medicine in 2017. The Division of hospital medicine is the 13th in the department of medicine and the first one to be created in over 60 years. As division chief, I oversee all of our clinical, academic, research, and educational endeavors. Currently, we have approximately 130 hospitalists in our group and about 30 advanced practice providers (APPs) with a support and research staff of about 15 individuals. So I like to say we have a big family!