Mark Benson, MD, associate professor and associate program director for the Advanced Endoscopy Fellowship, Gastroenterology and Hepatology, has been named to the new Advanced Endoscopy Endowed Professorship.

The professorship is made possible thanks to a $2 million gift from a grateful patient family, with half of the amount available over the next five years and half as part of a planned gift through the family’s estate.

The funding gives Dr. Benson, who is in high clinical demand as an interventional endoscopist, additional resources to develop his research in advanced endoscopy—as he explains in the video below.

No stone unturned

It was a chance referral that led the patient to Dr. Benson, after seven years of debilitating symptoms, myriad tests, ineffective medications, and unsuccessful diagnoses by experts in and around the Chicago area.

“When I see any patient, I try to put myself in their shoes,” says Dr. Benson, vividly recalling the misery and frustration of the patient in their first meeting. “I went through [the patient’s] chart thoroughly and tried to think about areas that weren’t investigated. I tried to turn over every stone until I found one that had an answer.”

That answer was remarkably quick in coming.

“For such a long time this thing wrecking our lives had no name and no definition,” says the patient. “Then we saw Dr. Benson and by three o’clock that day, we knew what it was.”

“It was night and day,” adds the patient’s spouse. “Now we wonder—what if we’d found Dr. Benson seven years earlier? Whose life could be bettered if they are able to find him sooner rather than later?”

It is this line of thinking that led the couple to structure their gift in a way that can transform Dr. Benson’s practice in the short and long term.

An immediate need

Dr. Benson’s research has two primary themes: monitoring endoscopic quality and tracking outcomes at UW Health’s multidisciplinary pancreas cancer prevention clinic.

However, the specialized nature of advanced endoscopy techniques—which range from endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography to endoscopic ultrasound to double balloon enteroscopy—puts skilled practitioners like Dr. Benson in high demand and limits the time available for research.

The $1 million current gift created the Advanced Endoscopy Professorship and Dr. Benson will utilize the support from this professorship to hire an assistant to help prepare his research data for eventual publication.

In time he hopes this work will lead to improved care for patients suffering from gastrointestinal diseases at UW Health and beyond.

“This funding truly changes the direction of my career,” Dr. Benson says. “I genuinely feel honored to be the recipient of such a generous and meaningful gift.”

Photo and video credit: Clint Thayer/Department of Medicine.