As we approach the end of the calendar year and celebrate various holidays, it is great to see groups in the department sharing lively events and decorating their work areas. These activities speak to the collaborative culture we want to have and continue to grow throughout the Department of Internal Medicine. The cardiovascular medicine division has quite a holiday display, so you might want to journey through their area in Lied Tower sometime over the next few days!
This newsletter highlights a couple of new spaces where our faculty, trainees and staff will be spending time. The Kearney Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center is now seeing patients in a new building. This is a wonderful asset to that community and will be a resource when the medical school expansion at Kearney occurs in 2026. Additionally, the Innovation Design Unit (IDU) on the sixth floor of University Tower will start housing patients and our teams providing inpatient care there early in January. This space will allow testing of the best design and delivery of care in the future Project Health bed tower while caring for actual patients. Dr. Chad Vokoun, chief of the division of hospital medicine, has a key role in the IDU so seek him out if you have questions.
Also in this newsletter, don’t miss seeing how some of our colleagues have been recognized recently with either awards or selection for new roles at a national level. Congratulations to each of them!
We know that life has hard times as well as happy times. This is a difficult time for us as a department and UNMC as an institution with the passing of Dr. Ken Cowan, the former cancer center director and member of the oncology and hematology division. We have his wife Dr. Alison Freifeld, emeritus professor in the division of infectious diseases, and their family in our thoughts and prayers. Dr. Cowan was an extraordinary investigator, clinician and leader and has impacted so many lives in such a wonderful fashion.
As previously announced, I will be stepping down as chair of the UNMC Department of Internal Medicine at the end of December. I will still be around as a faculty member with special assignments from the Dean’s office. Dr. Mark Rupp will be leading the department forward as the interim chair and I know he will do a fantastic job. The search for the permanent chair begins with a search firm already engaged by the Dean’s office and a search committee led by Dr. Joseph Khoury, Chair of the UNMC Department of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology.
It has been my honor to serve as chair. It is a job I have truly loved. What made the job great has been all the good people I have been blessed to work with over nearly 10 years. I am grateful for each of you. Thank you for what you have done and will continue to do. I recently saw this quote:
“When we dream alone, it remains a dream. When we dream together, it is not just a dream. It is the beginning of reality.” – Dom Helder Camara
This department has so much potential to dream together about how to achieve even more in our patient care, education, research and service to the community and beyond. I am excited to see what happens next as the department creates its ongoing reality.
All the best in the holiday season and in the new year!