Welcome Spring! More light in the evenings and at least some days with spring-like temperatures bring me a sense of hope. In this newsletter, we welcome our new primary care sub-interns who start in July along with our new categorical and preliminary residents who recently matched with us. We are excited to have them join the department and look forward to journeying with them as they grow in their careers. You will also see that several faculty have been recognized for their excellent teaching contributions at the UNMC level (Drs. Marcelin, Fadul, and Zabih) as well as at the department level with our annual recognition of top teacher groups at both the resident/student level and fellowship level. Congratulations to all! We also have several faculty who have achieved Fellow status in the American College of Physicians and it great to see them receive this recognition.
We continue to grow our research and clinical work in pancreatic cancer. We welcome Dr. Hingorani who joins us from the University of Washington with his established pancreatic cancer research program later this spring. We thank Dr. Klute for her recent involvement advocating for pancreatic cancer research funding and for her own research and clinical work in this area.
It is always exciting to see recent important publications and the various kinds of research funding as well as other novel approaches to clinical problems that are faculty are doing that are highlighted in the newsletter.
Erin Snow who has been a cornerstone in our residency program recently transitioned to a new job in the Dean’s Office in the GME office. We cannot say "thank you" enough to Erin who has done such an amazing job for us. We are grateful she is still on campus and will be interfacing with us and helping train her replacement when she arrives in a couple of weeks (more on that in the next newsletter.)
On a sad note, we remember Mrs. Helen Harman, the wife of former faculty member Dr. Denham Harman, who passed away recently at age 100. Mrs. Harman’s husband made pivotal observations related to antioxidants and aging and Mrs. Harman was a great example of vibrant aging.
Our recent culture conversation topic is courage, one of our ITEACH values. Mary Radmacher’s quote "Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quite voice at the end of the day that says, ‘I will try again tomorrow.’" reminds me that a big part of courage is being willing to be vulnerable is our pursuit of excellence and recognizing we will make mistakes and that we learn from those mistakes. I am grateful to work with all the courageous members of the Internal Medicine team. Please find some time to enjoy a bit of spring on the random days that it appears!