update for 2009 Match applicants

Thank you again for coming to interview with us here in Galveston. I wanted to send you a brief update on how things are progressing here.

The debris cleanup is completed in most of the busiest parts of town. Many restaurants and businesses have reopened and more are still in progress. You will see construction all over town and I take that as a positive sign. I’ve been happy to learn over the past six weeks or so that all of my personal favorite restaurants either have already reopened or will soon! Post office access is improving, my favorite private mail business is back to normal operations and the UPS store is open. Mail delivery to homes has been restored for quite some time now. Grocery stores are back to normal, with the exception of the HEB which I’m told will not reopen.

I’m not sure about the status of apartment availability, but there are some homes for sale on the island again so it looks like the housing situation is beginning to have more options. There are plenty of housing options available on the mainland for those who might wish to commute to the island.

And probably most importantly from our perspective, John Sealy hospital reopened last week! We began admitting patients on day 1 and have continued to build a modest hospital service. We started block 8 today with 4 residents on the service. I will try to keep our progress updated on the blog, so you can keep up with the latest here.

We have successfully updated our curriculum with two new rotations – Nephrology in PGY3 and Geriatrics in PGY2 and we’re excited about both of those. Residents begin those new rotations today for the first time. We also have our R3s finishing up their last hospital block for the rest of this academic year with a private hospitalist service at Mainland Medical Center and we’re excited about that new opportunity.

There are two rotations that we are still working on at present. Cardiology will be transitioned to a private practice outpatient experience and we are still working to identify an appropriate community faculty for that rotation. Pediatric Emergency Medicine remains undecided. For the remainder of this academic year, the rotation will be a combination of pediatric urgent care experiences in the new location for the Department of Pediatrics Urgent Care Center here on the island and the Pedi ER at Clearlake Regional. Closer to the end of the academic year we will evaluate those two experiences and make a decision for next academic year.

As you probably already know, we are in our new clinic space in the University Hospital Clinics building. We’re pleased to have two of our nurses from the PCP stay on with us and they are doing a great job trying to get us organized in our new space. The volume is picking up and I think over the next month will be our best indication of how that may be leveling off for the immediate future. We are exploring some new options for resident/faculty partnerships that we hope will build volume for the residents more quickly.

I am extremely pleased that our Residency Program infrastructure and staff are intact and stable so that our administrative activities remain productive. Unfortunately we did have some impact to the faculty in losing Dr. King and Dr. Irwin from Residency, as well as some of the other department faculty being impacted. My Assistant Program Director, Ron Williams, is also subject to having his time reduced to 50% the end of May and I am hoping that we are able to continue increasing our departmental productivity so that is not implemented. Two departmental faculty have announced their resignation effective March. These faculty were not members of the Residency Program faculty, but did have a small percentage of time in attending. In all fairness, I expect we will lose another one or two department faculty in the next six to twelve months so we will be in faculty recruiting mode again. The Residency Program faculty is stable to the best of my knowledge and I believe we have only one faculty member considering looking for another opportunity.

We still have some work to do, but we’ve come a long way since the hurricane. I’m pleased that we’ve been able to take advantage of the situation to go ahead with some curriculum changes we’d been considering prior to the storm and that we’re going to come out of this better than we went in. I will be doing my best to ensure that we take similar advantage of the need to recruit new faculty by recruiting selectively for skills to move us forward with some projects we’ve been considering as well as building in some areas we’d like to strengthen current activities.

As we discussed when you interviewed, we plan to recruit for four residents in the 2009 Matches (AOA and NRMP). If the recovery proceeds as expected, we will add one or two R2s to that class for the 2010-11 academic year and recruit a full class of eight in the 2010 Matches.

Thank you again for interviewing with us. We look forward to the Match and wish you the best as well. We hope that Galveston remains in your consideration and would be happy to answer any further questions you might have before submitting your match list.

Sincerely,

Lisa R. Nash, DO, FAAFP
Program Director
UTMB Family Medicine Residency