Valerie Weber, MD, will be the guest speaker for the UNMC Department of Internal Medicine’s Robert S. Wigton Visiting Professorship of Medicine. Two talks will be held via Zoom on Friday, March 26.
About Robert Wigton, MD
An Omaha native, Dr. Wigton received his bachelor’s degree in art from Harvard College, and returned to Omaha for his medical training. He received his MD in 1969 from the University of Nebraska College of Medicine. After residency and chief residency in internal medicine at Nebraska, he joined the faculty of the College of Medicine at which time he was a Teaching and Research Scholar of the American College of Physicians.
He spent a sabbatical year in 1982 at the University of Pennsylvania. Currently a professor of internal medicine (part time), he has held several academic and administrative positions at the College of Medicine, including associate dean for graduate medical education, associate dean for academic affairs and chief of the section of general internal medicine.
As author of more than150 research publications and book chapters, he is internationally recognized for his research in medical education and medical decision making. He pioneered methods in computer-based teaching and was one of the first to show that computer-based training could improve diagnosis in actual practice. He developed a number of clinical decision rules to help physicians make more accurate diagnoses. An authority on the teaching of medical procedures, he researched ways to improve doctors’ performance of procedures and make them safer: he co-edited six CD-ROM publications that teach how to do primary care procedures.
Dr. Wigton has been active in national medical and research societies and has received leadership awards from the Society for Medical Decision Making, the Society for General Internal Medicine, the American College of Physicians and Alpha Omega Alpha medical honorary society. He enjoys studying the history of medicine, painting and hiking.
“Leadership in the Eye of the Storm,” will be held at 8:30 a.m. and “Into the Lifeboats: The closure of Hahnemann University Hospital and the Implications for Academic Medicine,” will be featured at noon during Grand Rounds.
The professorship brings top leaders and researchers from other academic institutions and agencies throughout the world toward building excellence and eminence in research, education and patient care. It also aims to interest young faculty, especially faculty who have an interest in general internal medicine research.
Since November 2020, Dr. Weber has been professor and dean of the Wright State University Boonshoft School of Medicine. Prior to that she was the Deborah J. Tuttle, MD, and John P. Piper, MD, senior vice dean for educational affairs at Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia.
Prior to joining Drexel in 2014, Dr. Weber served as chair of the department of clinical sciences, associate dean for clinical affairs, and professor of medicine at the Commonwealth School of Medicine in Scranton, Pennsylvania. As a member of the senior leadership team of the Commonwealth School of Medicine, Dr. Weber had a major role in many aspects of the development of the new school, which awarded its first medical degrees in May 2013.
She was responsible for recruiting and developing more than 400 faculty members for the departments of medicine, surgery and psychiatry, as well as faculty leaders, to create and implement the curriculum. She also led the development of the school’s innovative clinical curriculum, the centerpiece of which is a third-year longitudinal integrated clerkship, the largest implementation of that model in the world. This involved the development of medical school faculty across a 16-county region, establishing academic affiliations with nearly 30 hospitals and dozens of physician groups and crafting a robust assessment plan.
Prior to her role at Commonwealth, Dr. Weber was division chief of general internal medicine and geriatrics at Geisinger Health System, which is associated with the Commonwealth School of Medicine. While at Geisinger, from 2000 to 2009, she held appointments at Temple University School of Medicine, Thomas Jefferson University Medical College and at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
Dr. Weber earned her MD from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, an MS in health care management from the Harvard School of Public Health, and a BA in psychology from Washington and Jefferson College. She conducted her internship and residency in medicine at The Graduate Hospital in Philadelphia, where she also served as chief resident.
Robert Wigton, MD, collaborated with Tom Tape, MD, and the University of Nebraska Foundation, to create the visiting professorship.
“Leadership in the Eye of the Storm” can be viewed here on March 26 at 8:30 a.m.
“Into the Lifeboats: The closure of Hahnemann University Hospital and the Implications for Academic Medicine” can be viewed here on March 26 at noon.