New faculty grow psychiatry, surgery ranks

The Medical Center is proud to announce the following additions to its faculty and leadership staff.

Beverly J. Bryant, M.D.

Bryant

Dr. Beverly J. Bryant, an experienced child, adolescent and adult psychiatrist at Connections at Hattiesburg Clinic, has joined the Medical Center faculty as an associate professor of psychiatry.

After receiving her B.A. with highest honors from the University of Texas at Austin in 1981, Bryant earned her M.D. at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School at Dallas in 1985. She was a house staff officer in psychiatry at Mount Sinai Hospital, New York, from 1985-88 and a child and adolescent psychiatry fellow in a joint fellowship program at the River View Hospital for Children and the Yale Child Study Center from 1988-90.

She served as medical director at the San Marcos Treatment Center, Texas, from 1990-92 before entering private practice in child, adolescent and adult psychiatry in Austin, Texas. In 1995 she became chairman of the Psychiatry Section at the Welborn Clinic, Evansville, Indiana. In 1997 she joined the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas, as program director and staff psychiatrist in the Eating Disorder and Trauma Recovery Program and became program director of Child and Adolescent Inpatient Service there in 1999. In 2001 she moved to Hattiesburg and served as staff psychiatrist and medical director of the Child and Adolescent Inpatient Service, the Child and Adolescent Day Treatment Program and the Residential Eating Disorder Treatment Program for Adolescents at Forrest General Hospital/Pine Grove Recovery Center. In 2004 she was a founding member of Connections at Hattiesburg Clinic and began a 13-year association with the clinic. She concurrently served as medical director of a Specialized Treatment Facility in Gulfport from 2009-13.

An active member of the American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the American Society of Addiction Medicine and the American Medical Society, Bryant has more than 10 invited presentations nationally and has authored or coauthored three articles in peer-reviewed scientific publications.
 

Richard Paschal Cochran, M.D.

Cochran

Dr. Richard Paschal “Pat” Cochran has joined the Medical Center faculty as a professor of surgery.

After receiving his B.S. in premedical studies from Davidson College in 1974, Cochran earned his M.D. at the Emory University School of Medicine in 1978. He did a general surgery internship and residency, as well as a surgical research fellowship in transplant immunology, from 1978-1984. He served as chief resident in general surgery at the University of Texas Health Science Center from 1983-84. Cochran did his cardiovascular and thoracic surgery residency at the University of Utah from 1984-86, where he also was chief resident in cardiovascular and thoracic surgery from 1985-86.

Cochran returned to the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School faculty in 1986 as an assistant professor of thoracic and cardiovascular surgery, where he helped start UTSMS's heart transplant program and began his research in computer modeling of heart valves. In 1990 he was recruited to the University of Washington as an assistant professor of cardiothoracic surgery. He was promoted to associate professor in 1995; while there, he specialized in surgical correction of valvular heart disease and received an NIH grant for computer modeling of the diseased mitral valve. He was recruited to the University of Wisconsin, where he served as a tenured full professor and chair of cardiothoracic surgery from 1998-2002.

In 2002, he was asked to start a new heart surgery program at the Central Maine Heart and Vascular Institute at the Central Maine Medical Center. As medical director of cardiothoracic surgery, he developed a novel “single stay unit” where patients with heart disease were admitted to one bed for all their care. In 2008, he was recruited to Maui Memorial Medical Center to start the first heart program in the state outside of Honolulu. He served as director of cardiovascular and thoracic surgery at Maui Memorial Medical Center. In late 2011, he took a short clinical hiatus to serve as medical director for a novel heart valve company and assisted in developing the European clinical implant trial. In early 2012, he returned to clinical practice, first as a full-time cardiothoracic surgeon at South Georgia Medical Center until 2014, then as a locum tenens surgeon from 2014-17, primarily at the International Heart Institute in Missoula, Montana; he also assisted other programs needing part-time coverage.

Cochran has been a fellow of the American Association of Thoracic Surgeons, the American College of Chest Physicians, the American College of Cardiology and the American College of Surgeons. He also has been an active member of several professional organizations, including the Western Thoracic Surgical Association, the Pacific Coast Surgical Society and the Society of Thoracic Surgeons. Cochran is the author or coauthor of 76 articles in refereed journals, 77 abstracts and seven book chapters. He has given 15 invited presentations at national or international scientific meetings, 29 regional or local presentations and 11 poster presentations.

Cochran has served as principal investigator for numerous research projects that have garnered more than $1.5 million in funding and has been a coinvestigator on studies totaling more than $7 million.