Fourth-year medical students Jeff Nienaber and Neil Jones were named recently as the winners of an inaugural poster contest in the department of family medicine.
Each student will receive $250 for his work. The posters dealt with health projects that the students completed during their eight-week Family Medicine rural preceptorship during their third year of medical school.
“These posters represent the best projects from the 2001-2002 academic year,” said Paul Paulman, M.D., professor of family medicine and organizer of the contest. “Jeff and Neil, along with the other six finalists, did a great job. They really conducted some nice research regarding a health problem in rural Nebraska.”
The cash awards for the poster competition were funded by the Nebraska Academy of Family Physicians and the UNMC department of family medicine, which is chaired by Michael Sitorius, M.D.
All third-year medical students participate in the rural preceptorship. Dr. Sitorius said students consistently rank the eight-week period among the top preceptorships. The poster projects came about as a result of the quality of the projects and the need to recognize the students’ efforts, Dr. Sitorius said.
“The competition also gave them a means to share some of their findings, which is very important,” Dr. Sitorius said. “Those findings deal with very relevant issues in rural Nebraska, and therefore can be very helpful to health-care providers in those areas.”
In their projects, students looked at illnesses and processes affecting rural populations; those ranged from breastfeeding to screening of hypertension. The students analyzed the scope of the problem in the community in which they served, did background research and proposed a change or solution to lessen the burden that the condition caused in the community.
Upon completion of the projects, Helen McIlvain, M.D., associate professor and director of research in the department of family medicine, reviewed all of the projects and chose the best 10.
Those 10 students were invited to submit a poster. Eight of the students did, and their posters were judged by family medicine faculty Bob Bowman, M.D., Laeth Nasir, M.D., and Naomi Lacy, M.D. Nienaber and Jones were named the winners. Nienaber’s project dealt with breastfeeding, while Jones focused on birth delivery methods.
Other finalists included Trevor VanSchooneveld, Kristin Moore, Eric Eisenmen, Kari Wendt, Christine Aita and Stephanie Randall.
Dr. Paulman said Barbara Goodman, coordinator of undergraduate training, deserved a significant amount of credit for setting up and running the contest.