Profiles in Rheumatology: Dr. James O'Dell, A Mentor Who Matters

Countless rheumatologists who look back on their training count Dr. James O’Dell as being among their mentors who mattered.

Such has been Dr. O’Dell’s enthusiasm for rheumatology and teaching that many young physicians in their internal medicine residency opted to leave their home states and come to Omaha to focus on rheumatology in a fellowship at the University of Nebraska with him.

One such former resident and then fellow Dr. Steve Craig tells a typical story of inspiration at the hand of Dr. O’Dell: "In my second year of [internal medicine] residency, I stumbled upon my rheumatology rotation.

"Through the course of the rotation, Dr. O’Dell spent no less than 3.5 hours each week in didactic training of the students and residents. Most of these sessions were early in the morning, so as not to interfere with typical resident duties on the rotation. He did this month after month, and has done so year after year.

"He never tires of teaching the residents, and his work shows in the results of national testing scores of his residents. In any case, I found myself not wanting to leave the rotation when the calendar turned," said Dr. Craig, now a rheumatologist in Des Moines, Iowa.

Above all else, Dr. O’Dell "believed firmly that a good rheumatologist must first be a good internist," said Dr. Craig, who noted that during his "intern year, I was impressed to discover that he and other faculty members in the rheumatology department took a month or two a year to act as the staff physician on one of the inpatient internal medicine teams."

Another former resident and then fellow, Dr. Ted R. Mikuls, of the University of Nebraska, noted of Dr. O’Dell: "Like all great mentors, Jim had a much bigger impact on the next generation of rheumatologists and internists than he could possibly imagine. Seldom a day goes by that I don’t hear echoes of lessons I’ve learned from Jim reflected in my approach to training and patient care."

Over the course of his 27 years and counting of running the Internal Medicine Residence Training Program at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, Dr. O’Dell has directed the training of more than 600 residents.

Dr. O’Dell followed an unlikely path to a career in medicine in that his undergraduate degree from the University of Nebraska is in electrical engineering. It is difficult to imagine that such a personable man as Dr. O’Dell would be fulfilled living his life among engineers. And indeed, Dr. O’Dell saw that the path to happiness lay elsewhere. "I started college in the school of engineering and worked summers with an engineering firm and realized that I wanted and needed more direct interactions with people on a day-to-day basis. I finished my engineering degree so I would have something to fall back on if medical school didn’t go so well – as soon as I got into the clinical years I have never looked back. The engineering background is very helpful in organization and working through things logically – I think this has been particularly true for some of the research that I have done.

"In medical school I thought I would be a family physician or a surgeon and interviewed for residence in those two areas. During January of my senior year after interviewing was over I had a clear epiphany that I was cut out to be an internist! I was able to switch to an IM residence.

"The choice of rheumatology was harder – ultimately I wanted to know one area really well but at the same time continue to take care of the whole patient and not just an organ. I also wanted to follow my patients for the long-term and not just come in and out of their lives. Rheumatology gave me the opportunity to do all of this. After seeing this modeled by Dr. Art Weaver in Lincoln, Nebraska, I was sold, and as they say, the rest is history," said Dr. O’Dell, who is now the Bruce Professor of Internal Medicine, vice-chair of internal medicine, and chief of the division of rheumatology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha as well as president of the American College of Rheumatology.

One of his mentors during his rheumatology fellowship at the University of Colorado at Denver was Dr. Herbert Kaplan, now retired. "When [Dr. O’Dell] trained there was a 30-bed rheumatology unit in the hospital. When he made rounds with me, his enthusiasm and ability to relate to patients was unusual as was his ability to soak up knowledge and work cooperatively with the nurses and myself to the patients’ benefit."

Dr. O’Dell has not regretted his decision to become a rheumatologist. He still recalls clearly some of the patients he met during his fellowship at the University of Colorado and what they taught him about the specialty. One such patient was "[a] delightful elderly gentleman from Bolivia who had just come to Denver to live with his daughter. He suffered greatly from what had been diagnosed as rheumatoid arthritis but what was really chronic gout. When we figured this out and got him on the right therapy, it was, at least to him, a miracle," recalled Dr. O’Dell.

"I remember many of my heroic RA patients who suffered greatly from their disease without much in the way of complaints at a time when we did not have much to offer them. These people and their unbelievably positive attitudes are a big reason why I have worked the last 30 years to help understand vastly superior ways to treat them," he said.

Research has long been an important priority for Dr. O’Dell. Among his research projects are studies that compare active treatments in patients whose RA remains active despite methotrexate therapy; genetics of RA; treatment of early aggressive RA; and combination disease-modifying antirheumatic drug therapy for RA.

Dr. Arthur L. Weaver noted of Dr. O’Dell’s research: "He created and continues to manage the RAIN [Rheumatoid Arthritis Investigational Network], which is a unique research consortium of academic and practicing rheumatologists whose primary mission has been to answer everyday questions via investigator initiated research. The RAIN network was responsible for multiple innovative studies including the initial trial and subsequent worldwide prominence of ‘Triple Therapy,’ " said Dr. Weaver, who is clinical professor of medicine at the University of Nebraska and has known Dr. O’Dell since his days as chief resident at the University of Nebraska.

Dr. Kaplan, past president of ACR from 1993-1994, remembers that he mentioned Dr. O’Dell and the RAIN network during his presidential speech as a singular example of research that assessed data gathering from both academic and practice settings. "Most researchers do all one or all the other. [Dr. O’Dell] set the precedent of gathering data from both sources."

Installed as president of the American College of Rheumatology at the annual meeting in November, Dr. O’Dell has a long record of involvement with the ACR, serving in many leadership positions both within the college and its Research and Education Foundation (REF) for the past 20 years. He was president of the REF from 2005-2007, secretary of ACR in 2009, and ACR president-elect in 2011. He served as chair of Patient Giving for the REF’s Within Our Reach campaign, chair of the ACR Registry Task Force, and first chair of the ACR Registry and Health Information Technology Committee.

Some of his earlier committee leadership roles include serving as chair of the Annual Scientific Meeting Abstract Selection Committee in 1998 and 1999, serving on the committee that developed the ACR Guidelines for the Management of Rheumatoid Arthritis in 1996 and 2008, and serving on the Blue Ribbon Committee on Access to Care in 1999. Recently, Dr. O’Dell chaired the association’s Rheumatoid Arthritis Clinical Trial Investigators Ad Hoc Task Force, whose findings were published in the August 2011 issue of Arthritis & Rheumatism.

While he may have been the first physician in his family, Dr. O’Dell’s family is making medicine a family tradition. "[M]y younger brother is an academic general internist and educator at the U. of Nebraska (UNMC). I also now have a son-in-law who is an internist at UNMC, a nephew in residence at UNMC, and a daughter-in-law who is in her first year of medical school also at UNMC," he said.

Dr. O’Dell is not only a rheumatologist, he has been an arthritis patient. His two new knees attest to the fact that he has walked a mile in the shoes of patients with knee pain, and he has followed rheumatologic advice regarding exercise: "I swim 3 to 4 miles per week. I started this 30 years ago when I started having knee arthritis problems. Now even though I have two new knees, I still swim," he said.

When asked to imagine what he will be doing in 5 years, Dr. O’Dell imagines that he will be "[d]oing much the same things I’m doing now – teaching and working to find better ways to treat RA. Also I hope to slow down enough to enjoy my two grand children."

Countless rheumatologists who look back on their training count Dr. James O’Dell as being among their mentors who mattered.

Such has been Dr. O’Dell’s enthusiasm for rheumatology and teaching that many young physicians in their internal medicine residency opted to leave their home states and come to Omaha to focus on rheumatology in a fellowship at the University of Nebraska with him.

One such former resident and then fellow Dr. Steve Craig tells a typical story of inspiration at the hand of Dr. O’Dell: "In my second year of [internal medicine] residency, I stumbled upon my rheumatology rotation.

"Through the course of the rotation, Dr. O’Dell spent no less than 3.5 hours each week in didactic training of the students and residents. Most of these sessions were early in the morning, so as not to interfere with typical resident duties on the rotation. He did this month after month, and has done so year after year.

"He never tires of teaching the residents, and his work shows in the results of national testing scores of his residents. In any case, I found myself not wanting to leave the rotation when the calendar turned," said Dr. Craig, now a rheumatologist in Des Moines, Iowa.

Above all else, Dr. O’Dell "believed firmly that a good rheumatologist must first be a good internist," said Dr. Craig, who noted that during his "intern year, I was impressed to discover that he and other faculty members in the rheumatology department took a month or two a year to act as the staff physician on one of the inpatient internal medicine teams."

Another former resident and then fellow, Dr. Ted R. Mikuls, of the University of Nebraska, noted of Dr. O’Dell: "Like all great mentors, Jim had a much bigger impact on the next generation of rheumatologists and internists than he could possibly imagine. Seldom a day goes by that I don’t hear echoes of lessons I’ve learned from Jim reflected in my approach to training and patient care."

Over the course of his 27 years and counting of running the Internal Medicine Residence Training Program at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, Dr. O’Dell has directed the training of more than 600 residents.

Dr. O’Dell followed an unlikely path to a career in medicine in that his undergraduate degree from the University of Nebraska is in electrical engineering. It is difficult to imagine that such a personable man as Dr. O’Dell would be fulfilled living his life among engineers. And indeed, Dr. O’Dell saw that the path to happiness lay elsewhere. "I started college in the school of engineering and worked summers with an engineering firm and realized that I wanted and needed more direct interactions with people on a day-to-day basis. I finished my engineering degree so I would have something to fall back on if medical school didn’t go so well – as soon as I got into the clinical years I have never looked back. The engineering background is very helpful in organization and working through things logically – I think this has been particularly true for some of the research that I have done.

"In medical school I thought I would be a family physician or a surgeon and interviewed for residence in those two areas. During January of my senior year after interviewing was over I had a clear epiphany that I was cut out to be an internist! I was able to switch to an IM residence.

"The choice of rheumatology was harder – ultimately I wanted to know one area really well but at the same time continue to take care of the whole patient and not just an organ. I also wanted to follow my patients for the long-term and not just come in and out of their lives. Rheumatology gave me the opportunity to do all of this. After seeing this modeled by Dr. Art Weaver in Lincoln, Nebraska, I was sold, and as they say, the rest is history," said Dr. O’Dell, who is now the Bruce Professor of Internal Medicine, vice-chair of internal medicine, and chief of the division of rheumatology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha as well as president of the American College of Rheumatology.

One of his mentors during his rheumatology fellowship at the University of Colorado at Denver was Dr. Herbert Kaplan, now retired. "When [Dr. O’Dell] trained there was a 30-bed rheumatology unit in the hospital. When he made rounds with me, his enthusiasm and ability to relate to patients was unusual as was his ability to soak up knowledge and work cooperatively with the nurses and myself to the patients’ benefit."

Dr. O’Dell has not regretted his decision to become a rheumatologist. He still recalls clearly some of the patients he met during his fellowship at the University of Colorado and what they taught him about the specialty. One such patient was "[a] delightful elderly gentleman from Bolivia who had just come to Denver to live with his daughter. He suffered greatly from what had been diagnosed as rheumatoid arthritis but what was really chronic gout. When we figured this out and got him on the right therapy, it was, at least to him, a miracle," recalled Dr. O’Dell.

"I remember many of my heroic RA patients who suffered greatly from their disease without much in the way of complaints at a time when we did not have much to offer them. These people and their unbelievably positive attitudes are a big reason why I have worked the last 30 years to help understand vastly superior ways to treat them," he said.

Research has long been an important priority for Dr. O’Dell. Among his research projects are studies that compare active treatments in patients whose RA remains active despite methotrexate therapy; genetics of RA; treatment of early aggressive RA; and combination disease-modifying antirheumatic drug therapy for RA.

Dr. Arthur L. Weaver noted of Dr. O’Dell’s research: "He created and continues to manage the RAIN [Rheumatoid Arthritis Investigational Network], which is a unique research consortium of academic and practicing rheumatologists whose primary mission has been to answer everyday questions via investigator initiated research. The RAIN network was responsible for multiple innovative studies including the initial trial and subsequent worldwide prominence of ‘Triple Therapy,’ " said Dr. Weaver, who is clinical professor of medicine at the University of Nebraska and has known Dr. O’Dell since his days as chief resident at the University of Nebraska.

Dr. Kaplan, past president of ACR from 1993-1994, remembers that he mentioned Dr. O’Dell and the RAIN network during his presidential speech as a singular example of research that assessed data gathering from both academic and practice settings. "Most researchers do all one or all the other. [Dr. O’Dell] set the precedent of gathering data from both sources."

Installed as president of the American College of Rheumatology at the annual meeting in November, Dr. O’Dell has a long record of involvement with the ACR, serving in many leadership positions both within the college and its Research and Education Foundation (REF) for the past 20 years. He was president of the REF from 2005-2007, secretary of ACR in 2009, and ACR president-elect in 2011. He served as chair of Patient Giving for the REF’s Within Our Reach campaign, chair of the ACR Registry Task Force, and first chair of the ACR Registry and Health Information Technology Committee.

Some of his earlier committee leadership roles include serving as chair of the Annual Scientific Meeting Abstract Selection Committee in 1998 and 1999, serving on the committee that developed the ACR Guidelines for the Management of Rheumatoid Arthritis in 1996 and 2008, and serving on the Blue Ribbon Committee on Access to Care in 1999. Recently, Dr. O’Dell chaired the association’s Rheumatoid Arthritis Clinical Trial Investigators Ad Hoc Task Force, whose findings were published in the August 2011 issue of Arthritis & Rheumatism.

While he may have been the first physician in his family, Dr. O’Dell’s family is making medicine a family tradition. "[M]y younger brother is an academic general internist and educator at the U. of Nebraska (UNMC). I also now have a son-in-law who is an internist at UNMC, a nephew in residence at UNMC, and a daughter-in-law who is in her first year of medical school also at UNMC," he said.

Dr. O’Dell is not only a rheumatologist, he has been an arthritis patient. His two new knees attest to the fact that he has walked a mile in the shoes of patients with knee pain, and he has followed rheumatologic advice regarding exercise: "I swim 3 to 4 miles per week. I started this 30 years ago when I started having knee arthritis problems. Now even though I have two new knees, I still swim," he said.

When asked to imagine what he will be doing in 5 years, Dr. O’Dell imagines that he will be "[d]oing much the same things I’m doing now – teaching and working to find better ways to treat RA. Also I hope to slow down enough to enjoy my two grand children."

Countless rheumatologists who look back on their training count Dr. James O’Dell as being among their mentors who mattered.

Such has been Dr. O’Dell’s enthusiasm for rheumatology and teaching that many young physicians in their internal medicine residency opted to leave their home states and come to Omaha to focus on rheumatology in a fellowship at the University of Nebraska with him.

One such former resident and then fellow Dr. Steve Craig tells a typical story of inspiration at the hand of Dr. O’Dell: "In my second year of [internal medicine] residency, I stumbled upon my rheumatology rotation.

"Through the course of the rotation, Dr. O’Dell spent no less than 3.5 hours each week in didactic training of the students and residents. Most of these sessions were early in the morning, so as not to interfere with typical resident duties on the rotation. He did this month after month, and has done so year after year.

"He never tires of teaching the residents, and his work shows in the results of national testing scores of his residents. In any case, I found myself not wanting to leave the rotation when the calendar turned," said Dr. Craig, now a rheumatologist in Des Moines, Iowa.

Above all else, Dr. O’Dell "believed firmly that a good rheumatologist must first be a good internist," said Dr. Craig, who noted that during his "intern year, I was impressed to discover that he and other faculty members in the rheumatology department took a month or two a year to act as the staff physician on one of the inpatient internal medicine teams."

Another former resident and then fellow, Dr. Ted R. Mikuls, of the University of Nebraska, noted of Dr. O’Dell: "Like all great mentors, Jim had a much bigger impact on the next generation of rheumatologists and internists than he could possibly imagine. Seldom a day goes by that I don’t hear echoes of lessons I’ve learned from Jim reflected in my approach to training and patient care."

Over the course of his 27 years and counting of running the Internal Medicine Residence Training Program at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, Dr. O’Dell has directed the training of more than 600 residents.

Dr. O’Dell followed an unlikely path to a career in medicine in that his undergraduate degree from the University of Nebraska is in electrical engineering. It is difficult to imagine that such a personable man as Dr. O’Dell would be fulfilled living his life among engineers. And indeed, Dr. O’Dell saw that the path to happiness lay elsewhere. "I started college in the school of engineering and worked summers with an engineering firm and realized that I wanted and needed more direct interactions with people on a day-to-day basis. I finished my engineering degree so I would have something to fall back on if medical school didn’t go so well – as soon as I got into the clinical years I have never looked back. The engineering background is very helpful in organization and working through things logically – I think this has been particularly true for some of the research that I have done.

"In medical school I thought I would be a family physician or a surgeon and interviewed for residence in those two areas. During January of my senior year after interviewing was over I had a clear epiphany that I was cut out to be an internist! I was able to switch to an IM residence.

"The choice of rheumatology was harder – ultimately I wanted to know one area really well but at the same time continue to take care of the whole patient and not just an organ. I also wanted to follow my patients for the long-term and not just come in and out of their lives. Rheumatology gave me the opportunity to do all of this. After seeing this modeled by Dr. Art Weaver in Lincoln, Nebraska, I was sold, and as they say, the rest is history," said Dr. O’Dell, who is now the Bruce Professor of Internal Medicine, vice-chair of internal medicine, and chief of the division of rheumatology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha as well as president of the American College of Rheumatology.

One of his mentors during his rheumatology fellowship at the University of Colorado at Denver was Dr. Herbert Kaplan, now retired. "When [Dr. O’Dell] trained there was a 30-bed rheumatology unit in the hospital. When he made rounds with me, his enthusiasm and ability to relate to patients was unusual as was his ability to soak up knowledge and work cooperatively with the nurses and myself to the patients’ benefit."

Dr. O’Dell has not regretted his decision to become a rheumatologist. He still recalls clearly some of the patients he met during his fellowship at the University of Colorado and what they taught him about the specialty. One such patient was "[a] delightful elderly gentleman from Bolivia who had just come to Denver to live with his daughter. He suffered greatly from what had been diagnosed as rheumatoid arthritis but what was really chronic gout. When we figured this out and got him on the right therapy, it was, at least to him, a miracle," recalled Dr. O’Dell.

"I remember many of my heroic RA patients who suffered greatly from their disease without much in the way of complaints at a time when we did not have much to offer them. These people and their unbelievably positive attitudes are a big reason why I have worked the last 30 years to help understand vastly superior ways to treat them," he said.

Research has long been an important priority for Dr. O’Dell. Among his research projects are studies that compare active treatments in patients whose RA remains active despite methotrexate therapy; genetics of RA; treatment of early aggressive RA; and combination disease-modifying antirheumatic drug therapy for RA.

Dr. Arthur L. Weaver noted of Dr. O’Dell’s research: "He created and continues to manage the RAIN [Rheumatoid Arthritis Investigational Network], which is a unique research consortium of academic and practicing rheumatologists whose primary mission has been to answer everyday questions via investigator initiated research. The RAIN network was responsible for multiple innovative studies including the initial trial and subsequent worldwide prominence of ‘Triple Therapy,’ " said Dr. Weaver, who is clinical professor of medicine at the University of Nebraska and has known Dr. O’Dell since his days as chief resident at the University of Nebraska.

Dr. Kaplan, past president of ACR from 1993-1994, remembers that he mentioned Dr. O’Dell and the RAIN network during his presidential speech as a singular example of research that assessed data gathering from both academic and practice settings. "Most researchers do all one or all the other. [Dr. O’Dell] set the precedent of gathering data from both sources."

Installed as president of the American College of Rheumatology at the annual meeting in November, Dr. O’Dell has a long record of involvement with the ACR, serving in many leadership positions both within the college and its Research and Education Foundation (REF) for the past 20 years. He was president of the REF from 2005-2007, secretary of ACR in 2009, and ACR president-elect in 2011. He served as chair of Patient Giving for the REF’s Within Our Reach campaign, chair of the ACR Registry Task Force, and first chair of the ACR Registry and Health Information Technology Committee.

Some of his earlier committee leadership roles include serving as chair of the Annual Scientific Meeting Abstract Selection Committee in 1998 and 1999, serving on the committee that developed the ACR Guidelines for the Management of Rheumatoid Arthritis in 1996 and 2008, and serving on the Blue Ribbon Committee on Access to Care in 1999. Recently, Dr. O’Dell chaired the association’s Rheumatoid Arthritis Clinical Trial Investigators Ad Hoc Task Force, whose findings were published in the August 2011 issue of Arthritis & Rheumatism.

While he may have been the first physician in his family, Dr. O’Dell’s family is making medicine a family tradition. "[M]y younger brother is an academic general internist and educator at the U. of Nebraska (UNMC). I also now have a son-in-law who is an internist at UNMC, a nephew in residence at UNMC, and a daughter-in-law who is in her first year of medical school also at UNMC," he said.

Dr. O’Dell is not only a rheumatologist, he has been an arthritis patient. His two new knees attest to the fact that he has walked a mile in the shoes of patients with knee pain, and he has followed rheumatologic advice regarding exercise: "I swim 3 to 4 miles per week. I started this 30 years ago when I started having knee arthritis problems. Now even though I have two new knees, I still swim," he said.

When asked to imagine what he will be doing in 5 years, Dr. O’Dell imagines that he will be "[d]oing much the same things I’m doing now – teaching and working to find better ways to treat RA. Also I hope to slow down enough to enjoy my two grand children."