Heritage Snapshot: 210

Murray E. Brandstater was born April 21, 1935, in Hobart, Australia. As his father was a Seventh-day Adventist minister, his family moved every two years to country towns throughout Australia, and he attended eight different schools through high school. He has two sisters and a brother. When in high school, his brother, Bernard, was admitted to medical school, an experience that strongly influenced Murray’s decision to study medicine. Murray started medical school when he was only 16. Because he was so young, medical school was a challenge, initially. He worked and studied hard to succeed because his school fees were paid by a scholarship which required that he pass every year. Murray graduated from Melbourne University in 1957 with a six-year MBBS degree. (MB stands for Bachelor of Medicine and BS stands for Bachelor of Surgery.) The MBBS degree in Australia is equal to the MD degree in the United States. Dr. Brandstater started a residency in Internal Medicine and Rehabilitation medicine at the Melbourne Royal Children’s Hospital and completed it at the Alfred Hospital, also in Melbourne. His father, Roy Brandstater, married Murray and his wife, Karen in the East Prahran Seventh-day Adventist Church in Melbourne on April 19, 1962. The Brandstater’s have two sons and a daughter. Following his residency in Internal Medicine, Dr. Brandstater wanted to sub-specialize in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. Because this specialty was not available in Australia, he applied and was accepted for a position at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Because he wanted to participate in research, his residency lasted for four years instead of two; from 1964-1968. At this time, Dr. Brandstater had planned to return to Australia, but there was no particular job opening that appealed to him. At the same time he was recruited by a new medical school in Canada at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. Because he was on “the ground floor,” he was able to participate in developing the school’s new curriculum in Rehabilitation Medicine. He was there for 17 years before coming to Loma Linda in 1984. By this time, Dr. Brandstater had started looking for a new challenge. He had kept in contact with Loma Linda graduates over the years and eventually was urged to join the faculty of the School of Medicine. When he arrived the Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation program was just rudimentary. So, he started a new program from the ground up, including building up the clinical service at the Medical Center and starting a residency in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. Dr. Brandstater is grateful to Medical Center Administration for the priority it has given to developing the East Campus for both inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation patients, academic offices, and research. In fact, it is now the home of the new Rehabilitation, Orthopedic and Neurosurgical Institute.