Alton Ivan Sutnick (born July 6, 1928 in Trenton, New Jersey) is an American medical researcher, educator and administrator.
As chief of medicine at the army hospital, Sutnick observed and evaluated the first human blood marrow transplants, administered by Georges Mathé to six Yugoslav physicists who had been inadvertently exposed to lethal doses of radiation in 1959.
His susceptibility studies led him to collaborate with Dr. Daniel Miller to create Canscreen, the first cancer screening program based on risk factor analysis.
[23][24][25][26] He worked together with Soviet scientist Dr. Yuri Puchkov on the India project, the first time a Soviet-American team had addressed a health problem in another country.
In the 1960s, Howard Barrows and Paula Stillman introduced the use of simulated patients so that the clinical skills of all students in a medical school class could be tested in a standardized examination.
In 1989, Sutnick, collaborating with Stillman and John Norcini adapted this method so that actors in different centers could be trained to simulate the same symptoms and physical findings.
They also established the validity of this clinical skills assessment by showing that the scores of students on simulated patients correlated with the subsequent ratings given by their supervisors in hospitals.
[34] Sutnick's international work has extended to over 50 nations throughout Latin America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.