Name: Allison Ashford, MD
Medical school attended: UNMC
Location of your residency/fellowship training:
UNMC medicine/pediatrics (med/peds) followed by a chief resident year in internal medicine
What residency/fellowship program at UNMC are you serving as program director for: Med/peds
Number of trainees: 13, which will increase to 16 next year
How long have you been the program director: One year and a few weeks
What made you chose to become the program director:
The best part of my job is teaching and mentoring residents and students, so this was a natural next step for me. I also love the challenge and rigor of med/peds and want to continue to improve the program and promote it throughout our university.
What challenges do you foresee in graduate medical education in the future:
We need to continue to financially support programs in order to produce well-trained physicians to take care of more complex and multi-morbid patients. Training health care providers to provide exceptional care to their patients while also caring for themselves is far more than clinical experience. Fitting all of those ‘extras’ can sometimes feel stressful into the already jam-packed curriculum of residency. Health care has evolved (EMR/documentation, insurance issues, etc), and it’s important to help our trainees identify and recall the joy and privilege of this job.
What are the strengths of your training program:
Without a question, it’s the people in our program. Med/peds folks are unique by nature, and I feel honored to work and lead this group of residents. I also think we are the perfect ‘medium-sized’ combined program where we have a strong identity in both of our categorical programs, yet also have a fantastic identity all our own.
List some accomplishments that you are proud of:
- Graduating from this med/peds residency and then passing two sets of boards – even though I did it, it still surprises me. I’ll be sitting for my third set of boards (Pediatric Hospital Medicine) later this year.
- I was the first med/peds hospitalist here at UNMC.
- I am the current president of the Nebraska chapter of the Society of Hospital Medicine, a group that I restarted after a period of inactivity
- I’m honored to be a member of both the Gold Humanism Honor Society and Alpha Omega Alpha.
- Keeping a life outside of medicine. I’m certainly not perfect at this, but I work really hard at having some sort of work/life balance.
Tell us three things about you that others may not know:
- I am a recipe tester for America’s Test Kitchen.
- I am without shame a cat lady. My little Winnie has her own claim to fame – she made it on to an internet account, "Cat Shaming," a few years ago for attempting to hide behind a curtain despite having her tail hang out. As we say in the Ashford house, "She’s never going to be valedictorian!"
- My alternate career, with more time, would be to teach Turbo Kick Boxing!