COM employee of the month

Name: Rachel Nelsen

Title: Graduate Medical Education Coordinator

Hometown: Harvard, Nebraska

Number of years at UNMC: 29 years

Education: Omaha College of Health Careers (medical word processing).

Talk about your job and what you like best about it.

I am a coordinator in Graduate Medical Education. We help to facilitate all the training programs for the house officers on this campus. I handle all onboarding of new residents/fellows to include licensing and new hire paperwork. I handle all billing to facilities such as the VA, Children’s, Methodist and rural sites where our house officers rotate or actually do their residency when they are a rural resident. Otherwise, I handle the day-to-day requirements in GME.

I love who I work with — that is one of the things that makes my job the best. Not only is Vicki Hamm an amazing leader, I get to work directly with Dr. Chandra Are and Stefani Coleman also. I deal with all of our coordinators, and they are great too. There is never a dull moment. Just when you think life at work will slow down, it will surprise you. I love helping people, and when we hire all of these new doctors each year, trust me, they need a lot of guidance. Some days I go home wanting to pull my hair out, but together we all make things work here in GME.

List three things people may not know about you?

• I am the mother to two beautiful daughters — Kirsten (28) and Ashley (26) — and two handsome sons — Stephan (23) and Jared (20). I am the grandmother to two lovely little ladies, Ariadne (7) and Olivia (1½), and one handsome young man, Nicholas (6).
• I was a leader in Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts for 16 years, including more than eight years as a scoutmaster in Boy Scouts. In that time, I had 34 boys earn their Eagle Scout Award while I was the scoutmaster.
• Although I don’t live near any, I love the mountains and have always dreamed of retiring to Colorado and raising horses. However, now that I have grandchildren, I am not sure I will ever be able to leave them! (They are my reward for raising their parents.)