The 2021-22 academic year is off to a busy start! In this newsletter, you will see that we closed out the last academic year with a celebration of our graduating residents with awards to several residents for many outstanding accomplishments during training at a great outdoor event in June (with a restricted attendance—hopefully next June, we can allow more attendees!). At that event, we also recognized some faculty for their educational excellence. Dr. Jasmine Marcelin received the Sir William Osler award from the residents. We have also created new venues for recognizing faculty teaching with the Lifetime Education Excellence award which was given to Dr. Gerald Moore and celebrates the many ways he has provided educational leadership to medical students through his Senior Associate Dean role, residents, and rheumatology fellows throughout his career. We have also created platinum, gold and silver top teacher awards for those faculty receiving department top teacher award status for 25 years, 20 years, and 10 years respectively. Please see the link to see those recognized with these awards. I want to give a special "shout out" to our three Platinum winners– Dr. David O’Dell, Dr. James O’Dell, and Dr. Joseph Sisson. We are in the process of creating a new wall of recognition for faculty education awards near the faculty research awards on 5th floor of DOC by the Chair’s office.
The Department is pleased to welcome 36 new residents in our preliminary, categorical, and med-peds program, along with our new primary care trainees. We are equally delighted to have 34 new fellows join us. During this year, we are educating a total of 192 trainees (residents and fellows combined). We also have several new faculty and staff joining us and I hope you will look at those names here in the newsletter and help welcome people as they start working among us.
Thanks to the generosity and leadership of Dr. Robert Wigton in the General Internal Medicine division, the UNMC has a newly renovated space for welcoming people to the UNMC campus. If you have not yet seen the Wigton Heritage Center, you will need to venture through Wittson Hall. It is a truly wonderful space that celebrates the history of the campus and provides ample new meeting spaces. You may not know that our GIM division is 50 years old this year. Dr. Tape has recorded this history in a great document. I am sure he would share it with you!
There are new research endeavors and grants highlighted in the newsletter along with several faculty awards not only within UNMC but in the Omaha community.
This year as Nebraska Medicine and the UNMC College of Medicine continues its culture work, we will focus on each of our ITEACH values (innovation, teamwork, excellence, accountability, courage, healing) for two months at a time and remind ourselves of the culture tools that help us achieve those values. The focus for July and August is on innovation. Certainly, the past academic year has provided many "opportunities" for you all to show how innovative you can be as we work through various phases of the pandemic! Asking curious questions helps us understand situations so we can innovate. Importantly, one of our culture tools that helps innovation is a focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion because the more perspectives and life experiences we have in the room when we are trying to solve problems, the more creative we will be. I am looking at how our department can be more attentive to DEI, and we will likely be constructing a taskforce to help with this. Stay tuned for potential opportunities for you to shape our DEI work together.
I hope each of you is getting some time to enjoy your favorite summer activities. Please take good care of yourselves whether in the sun, on the water, or wherever your passions take you. Keep up the pandemic precautions so we can continue to enjoy some social interactions!
All the best!
Internal Medicine Message From the Chair
