Buffalo VA Medical Center

This 199-bed, 1.4 million-square-foot facility provides medical, surgical, mental health, long-term and outpatient care.

V A exterior.

The VA Western New York Healthcare System provides care to more than 44,000 veterans annually. Although patients hail primarily from the westernmost eight counties of Upstate New York, the hospital serves as the inpatient specialty care referral site for all veterans west of Syracuse.

Patients present with a wide range of disease states, encompassing one of the highest case severity indexes within the Veterans Health Affairs system.

The Buffalo VA Medical Center is the main referral center for area veterans seeking cardiac surgery, cardiology care and comprehensive cancer care.

It is one of only 12 VA medical centers nationwide conducting a trial of real-time, Internet-based electronic medical records exchanges with private sector hospitals, including all UB medical school rotation sites.

Training

Our Buffalo VA Medical Center training site has a general adult sleep medicine clinic, where you will gain significant experience treating sleep disorders within a veteran population. Caring for these patients will broaden your knowledge of comorbidities often occurring in older male patients and will familiarize you with sleep problems related to post-traumatic stress disorder.

Our active insomnia clinic at this site develops your skills in the differential diagnosis of chronic insomnia. You will acquire the knowledge you need to determine appropriate treatment options and gain proficiency using assessment tools. Here, we will educate you about pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions for insomnia. To help you understand psychological contributors to the disorder, you will have opportunities to observe and work alongside psychiatry faculty.

The Buffalo VA Medical Center is where you will gain the most experience in a continuity clinic setting. Here, we will help you understand the various etiologies of sleep disturbances and contributing factors to sleep disorders. Your work in our continuity clinic will increase your ability to make independent diagnostic and therapeutic decisions.

You will perform inpatient sleep consultations and increase your comprehension of the interactions between acute medical illnesses and sleep problems. You will also see directly referred outpatients.

You can expect to conduct most of your research at our Buffalo VA Medical Center. Additionally, you will participate in technical polysomnography training sessions at this site each week.

Patient Population

Patients are a combination of inpatients and outpatients. You'll see patients with a range of conditions, including:

  • sleep apnea
  • parasomnias
  • circadian rhythm disorder
  • insomnia
  • narcolepsy

Rotations

Your rotations at this site will include:

  • one half-day continuity clinic per week for the entire year
  • one half-day insomnia clinic per week for the entire year
  • one full day per week for the entire year: polysomnograhy review, polysomnography technical instruction, afternoon clinic
  • research mentoring
VA Western New York Healthcare System website

Location

Faculty and Staff

  • associate program director
  • pulmonary critical care specialists
  • certified sleep specialists
  • nurse practitioner
  • registered polysomnographic technologist

Facilities

  • 4-bed sleep lab