Van Vahle, M.D., a family medicine physician in Seward, Neb., has been honored as the Marion D. and Theodore H. Koefoot Jr., M.D., Outstanding Preceptor Award in Rural Family Medicine from the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
The Koefoot Award was created in 2005 in memory of Dr. Theodore Koefoot, and is granted to a rural Nebraska family physician who provides outstanding teaching and mentoring of medical students during their family medicine rural preceptorship and serves as an outstanding community physician. Nominations for this award are submitted by medical students who have completed their family medicine rotation.
Dr. Vahle’s value as a preceptor was captured by Shervin Razavian, a UNMC medical student who did his family medicine rotation with him.
“Dr. Vahle taught me the fundamentals of being a health care provider for the community as a whole,” Razavian said. “Working with him allowed me to appreciate the dedication and effort required to be an exceptional health care provider in a rural setting.”
From nightly dinners to health fairs and farmer’s markets, Dr. Vahle immersed Razavian in every aspect of small-town life and showed him why it is just as important to take part in the community health fair as it is to go to the summer band concerts in the park.
“He allowed me to see the big picture behind these events and why simply being there or providing a service to the community means so much,” Razavian said.
For the last 22 years, Dr. Vahle has welcomed students like Razavian into his family medicine practice.
“It’s been a good experience for me and for our clinic,” Dr. Vahle said. “We get such good students. The patients are always trying to get them to stay in town and practice.”
Being a preceptor is just one way Dr. Vahle feels he can pay back what he was given: the opportunity to go to medical school and become a doctor.
“I just had a feeling that this was something I needed to do,” he said.
Through world-class research and patient care, UNMC generates breakthroughs that make life better for people throughout Nebraska and beyond. Its education programs train more health professionals than any other institution in the state. Learn more at unmc.edu.
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