Last week, U.S. News and World Report ranked the University of Washington School of Medicine and School of Nursing number one among medical schools and nursing schools in the country for 2008.

This year marks the 14th straight year the UW School of Medicine has achieved top ranking, while the School of Nursing has held this position for every year that U.S. News and World Report has rated nursing schools since 1993.

Dr. Paul Ramsey, dean of the School of Medicine, said the UW is the only medical school in the nation to rank in the top 10 for all eight specialties. Some of these specialties include internal medicine, geriatrics, teaching medical students about AIDS, women’s health and the school’s physician assistant program.

“Our ratings are based on both quality and impact,” Ramsey said. “Almost every week, the UW releases a research announcement of national importance.”

The most recent report featured UW radiology professor Constance Lehman, who spoke of the role of MRI scans in detecting breast cancer. Lehman was part of the panel that constructed new MRI guidelines for the American Cancer Society.

The UW School of Medicine is second only to Harvard in the amount of research grant funding provided by the National Institutes of Health. These grants are determined by peer review and totaled about $573.2 million last year.

For the UW School of Nursing, however, funding has not steadily risen. During the first six years of the program, state funding fell because the University budget was unstable, Dean Nancy Woods said. With support from clinical agencies in the Seattle area, such as Harborview Medical Center, Virginia Mason and the Northwest Kidney Centers, expert nurses were provided to help teach the undergraduate program.

Without this funding, Woods said, UW could not afford to pay for all 96 undergraduates.

“We’ve held this line of quality, even through difficult times, and it has put us in a good position for achieving help for the foundation,” Woods said.

This year, the School of Nursing plans to launch a new Doctor of Nursing Practice degree to continue providing innovation in nursing, Woods said. The degree will expand student expertise in clinical inquiry, leadership and informational technology utilization. The goal is to improve preparation for nurse and care practitioners.

“When I finished my nursing degree in 1968, residencies for nursing students would last for about a year, and today they last for five years,” Woods said. “To deal with new technologies, this knowledge explosion has really touched all the disciplines.”

According to the UW School of Nursing Web site, the school contains the largest number of fellows in the American Academy of Nursing, a society of nursing leaders, in comparison with other schools.

The UW School of Medicine acts as a regional resource for Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho. Individuals affiliated with UW Medicine have received five Nobel Prize laureates since 1946, and the school has 29 members in the National Academy of Sciences.

Reach contributing writer Liz Burlingame at news@thedaily.washington.edu.