To Whom This May Concern:
This letter is in support of Dr. J. Mark Sloan for the Department of Medicine Junior Faculty Mentoring Award. Dr. Sloan has been my clinical and research mentor for the past 3 years, and I would not be the physician I am today without his guidance and support.
Clinically, Dr. Sloan shapes the fellow experience more than any other physician we work with at BMC. He teaches us directly in three conferences, including a biweekly hematology topic conference, a weekly case presentation conference, and a weekly hematopathology conference. In addition, he fosters our growth as teachers by including us in the yearly hematology course module for the medical students.
The clinically-relevant topics that Dr. Sloan conveys during his teaching sessions are often reinforced at the bedside, as Dr. Sloan is also the attending of choice for any hematology-related questions from both the fellows and the faculty. His wide breadth of knowledge in benign and malignant hematology, combined with his compassion for his patients, make him the ideal clinical mentor for fellows and residents.
Dr. Sloan’s clinic is always open to fellows. He has a high volume clinic, and he often has multiple fellows working with him voluntarily, because working with him is always rewarded with excellent teaching. Dr. Sloan works hard to ensure fellows are able to develop a panel of patients to follow longitudinally. Personally, I was able to follow certain patients for well over a year, which was a critical part of my training.
Dr. Sloan also served as my primary research mentor, as he does for many fellows. He effortlessly guided me through multiple projects including writing a phase II protocol evaluating ultra-high doses of dexamethasone for multiple myeloma, a letter of intent to Seattle Genetics to procure funding for studying a rare lymphoma (adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma, ATLL), a retrospective analysis evaluating prognostic indicators in AL amyloidosis, a case report presented in poster format at a regional conference, and a review article on ATLL. Additionally, Dr. Sloan introduced me to the New England Lymphoma Rounds, which is a quarterly meeting attended by many of the lymphoma experts in the Boston region. We worked together to present a case of ATLL at one of these meetings, and developed a multi-institutional consortium of lymphoma experts (the Boston Lymphoma Working Group) whose goal is to pool resources to study rare types of lymphoma, such as ATLL.
Dr. Sloan made me into the hematologist I am today through his incredible mentorship, as he has done for countless fellows before me. It is with the utmost confidence that I support Dr. Sloan for the Junior Faculty Mentoring Award, and I imagine this will only be his first of many such honors.
Please do not hesitate to contact me via phone (917-754-0887) or email () if you have any further questions or concerns.
Sincerely,
Christopher Dittus, DO, MPH
Assistant Professor of Medicine
Division of Hematology and Oncology, Lymphoma Program
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill