Paul Paulman, M.D., a native of Sutherland, Neb., was one of four University
of Nebraska Medical Center professors recently awarded the Outstanding
Teacher Award.
The Outstanding Teacher Award is the highest teaching award at UNMC.
Recipients are chosen by a selection committee based on nominations from
peers and students and class evaluations.
As the predoctoral education director of family medicine, Dr. Paulman’s
classes cover everything from history and physical exam skills, death and
dying issues and even how to appear in court as a medical expert. The subjects
might be hard to comprehend on a personal level, but his nominators for
the award said Dr. Paulman humanizes textbook information.
“As a student, it was important to me to see the human face Dr. Paulman
put on every aspect of medicine,” one nominator said. “During years where
most of a student’s time is spent with a book or in a lab, he reminds us
that medicine is first and foremost a human profession.”
Dr. Paulman attended Kearney State College and came to UNMC for medical
school, graduating in 1977. He spent almost two years at a small-town practice
in Spalding, Neb., with the National Health Service Corps, before returning
to UNMC in 1982 to take a teaching position.
He works with all four years of medical students, teaching them how
to provide comprehensive primary care to patients no matter the gender,
age or illness. With this knowledge, students are prepared to practice
in rural areas.
Many of his students volunteer at the student-operated SHARING clinic
in South Omaha, where students handle all aspects of patient care. Dr.
Paulman is a faculty adviser to the students who run the clinic, and he
works there one night a month. Also, for at least five years he’s accompanied
students on the Jamaica Annual Medical Mission, where last month 370 patients
were seen in one week.