David Pryluck, MD, MBA, loves being a physician. When he was appointed senior associate dean of the Sint Maarten campus for American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine (AUC) in October 2022, his career transitioned from a combination of physician and education leadership and clinical practice as an interventional radiologist to purely education administration for the betterment of its medical students in Sint Maarten – a community in which he now feels right at home.
“It is a genuinely unique experience being in a place solely focused on medical students,” he shared of his first nine months here. “There are no residents or fellows or even patients competing for my attention. The whole rhythm of the campus revolves around educating medical students, and for them, this is their opportunity to pursue their dream of becoming a physician.”
As senior associate dean, Dr. Pryluck leads the AUC campus team by fostering an environment that values diversity, promotes student, faculty and colleague engagement and success, and engages as a socially responsible member of the Sint Maarten community.
Valuing Diversity
“Diversity is a real part of the AUC experience and community,” Dr. Pryluck said of his new home at AUC. “As an openly gay physician and leader in healthcare education, the value of diversity of community, thought, and medical practice is limitless.”
Dr. Pryluck has vivid memories of times when gender identity topics were covered solely as behavioral health issues, and sexual identity topics covered as infectious disease risk factors. While a diagnostic radiology resident at New York University Grossman School of Medicine (Grossman), Dr. Pryluck experienced firsthand implicit bias in medical education when discussing sexual identity. He recalls feeling all eyes on him during a radiology teaching conference after it was explained that the key to the correct diagnosis for a particular chest x-ray was recognizing that a male with a nipple ring was clearly gay, and a gay male with pneumonia must have an AIDS-related infection. There were hardly any moments in his life and career that made him feel more uncomfortable than those times when LGBTQ+ health issues were viewed solely through the lens of pathology. These experiences have helped shape Dr. Pryluck’s approach to LGBTQ+ health issues in medical education.
“Teaching our students, normalizing and incorporating this education right into the curriculum as a legitimate, vital part of their education provides our students with the correct context and language, and gives them the communication skills to effectively care for this patient population when they ultimately become their doctors.”
He later added: “AUC has an integrated, systems-based curriculum, so there are opportunities to integrate the dialogue of LGBTQ+ health issues throughout the five semesters of medical sciences.”
Promoting Engagement and Success
Outside the classroom, AUC and Sint Maarten have become a paradise away from home back in the United States. AUC is also an especially heartwarming and unique opportunity for Dr. Pryluck as it represents the first opportunity for him to work together with his husband, Brian Patson, MD, associate professor of clinical medical sciences. What it means to them to live and work as a married couple has equally important meaning toward what Dr. Pryluck believes they represent for students and others. “At my prior organizations, I was always the leader of the LGBTQ+ student and resident groups,” Dr. Pryluck shared. “For me, it was always important to be visible, available, and approachable. At AUC it was even more important that I wasn't just Dean Pryluck the interventional radiologist turned Dean. I am an openly gay man, I am married to another openly gay man, and we are here to serve as mentors and role models for our students and the larger community.”
When Drs. Pryluck and Patson first arrived in Sint Maarten, one of the first things they did was seek out the LGTBQ+ Club on campus, a student-run group for which Dr. Patson now serves as faculty advisor. Though their professional roles differ as administrator and educator, the opportunity to engage with medical students in their respective capacities provides innumerable openings for mentorship and promotion of a positive, nurturing campus environment in which students are set up for success in and out of the classroom.
More About Dr. Pryluck
Dr. Pryluck grew up on Long Island, New York. From an early age, his family placed an emphasis on education leading to a successful career, and he dedicated himself to that promising outlook. He had an aptitude for science and decided to become a physician at seven years old. He enrolled at Duke University to study biology with every intent of pursuing medical school but diverged his career to investment banking on Wall Street during his senior year. “I wasn’t sure if I wanted to become a doctor out of genuine desire to become a physician or because it’s something I convinced myself was my only option. My mother cried when I told her I wasn’t going to medical school,” he recalled.
Wall Street brought Dr. Pryluck growth, maturity, new perspectives and awareness to the world, but amidst those experiences he found that there was still a desire to practice medicine. He chose to give up banking and resumed his path as a medical student. He enrolled at Grossman for medical school and returned there for his diagnostic radiology residency after completing a transitional year internship at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
Dr. Pryluck then moved to Philadelphia for his fellowship in Vascular and Interventional Radiology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and built his clinical and academic career at Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University, where he served as program director of the interventional radiology residency, associate professor of radiology, and director of medical student education in radiology. His passion for business never completely went away, and he simultaneously earned a Master of Business Administration from Fox School of Business at Temple University. Prior to joining AUC, he most recently served as vice chair of education in radiology and residency program director at Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania.
Dr. Pryluck’s clinical interests include complex inferior vena cava filter retrieval, trauma, and transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunts (TIPS). His research has been largely focused on undergraduate medical education in radiology and development of phantom model systems to train resident physicians and medical students to perform image-guided procedures. Dr. Pryluck is an active member of the Association of University Radiologists, Association of Program Directors in Radiology, and Radiological Society of North America — and serves on their respective diversity, equity, and inclusion committees.
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