We are finishing the first quarter of the 2017-2018 academic year and much has happened. We have been joined by a wonderful group of new residents and fellows. Together with their upper-level colleagues, they are playing vital roles in our patient care, educational and research missions. We are grateful to have them with us! We have also welcomed several new faculty. Please take a look at their pictures, so you reach out to them when you see them on the wards or clinics and introduce yourself. It helps new faculty know who to call for various challenging clinical questions or who might be a resource for a scholarly project. Our clinical partner, Nebraska Medicine, is welcoming its largest group of new nurses ever and many will soon be completing orientation and starting into their jobs. I encourage you to introduce yourself to nurses you don’t know and welcome them to Nebraska Medicine and UNMC. We know how important interdisciplinary teams are to the practice of medicine and we work more effectively as a team when we feel comfortable with the other team members.
There is plenty to see in this newsletter. We have highlighted the unique nature of our behavioral medicine program within the General Internal Medicine Division and Dr. Harsh is a key element of that program. You will see that several faculty are contributing to national organizations with their clinical and scholarly activities. Plus, we have faculty with noteworthy achievements outside of typical medical venues like Dr. Lydia Kang’s selection as a TEDx speaker here in Omaha in October.
I know that there are faculty and others in our department with close connections to the areas being hard hit by this year’s hurricane season to date. UNMC Today often highlights how we all might be able to help and certainly, the American Red Cross can use our donations as one possibility.
I want to remind you of a couple of things going on currently – the first is flu shots for yourself, as well as your patients and the second is the campaign by UNMC and Nebraska Medicine for donations to United Way of the Midlands that supports many organizations who provide assistance to our community and patients.
This will be the last newsletter that Selaba Travis creates for us as she will be retiring in a few weeks. I want to thank her for her many years of service to the department and all the newsletters, annual research reports, biennial reports she has created. That has been only one part of her job and those of you connected to our summer undergraduate research program know that she has been the heart and soul of that program. We will miss her enormously but are excited that she will be gaining some flexibility with her time.
Enjoy the autumn!