UTMB FMR Class of 2012

Happy 2009 Match Day to us!

WE FILLED!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's a wrap!

Our Match 2009 recruiting season is finished!! We completed interviews this week and last night held our official Rank Meeting. The Rank List is completed and will be loaded for the match next week.

I was very happy with the quality of our applicants' credentials. USMLE scores, medical school academic performance and recommendation letters were overall excellent and I'm quite pleased that despite the hurricane, we were able to hold steady regarding our commitment to performance standards for our applicants. Proportionately, we interviewed our usual number of applicants per slot (remember that we will be matching for 4 this year). Overall, I have to consider our 2009 Match recruiting season a success and we are hoping to fill our slots in the Match.

Many thanks to the Recruiting Team, especially our resident members and also to our applicants. We appreciate your openness to consider whether our challenges related to the hurricane recovery fit with how you'd like to see yourself grow and the experiences you'd like to have during residency.

Best wishes to our applicants for a successful match!

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

interviews

5 brave souls who are not afraid of a challenge have signed up for interviews since we started inviting applicants last week! We are so excited to begin looking FORWARD and planning for the future, beyond our immediate recovery timeframe.

In further news, OB and Adult ER rotations at UTMB return to our schedule in block 6 (November 17) and we're excited about that too. This is "hot off the press" news, just learned today.

Updated recruiting information

Please see the link to the right regarding Info for Applicants 2009, as the information has been updated to reflect our current status related to recovery from hurricane Ike.

Also, our new website has launched and the link to the right has been updated, so check out our new look and available information!

Information for applicants 2009

Update to reflect the impact of Hurricane Ike:

10/16/08 The UTMB campus continues its recovery efforts. As of today, FM is seeing patients in three clinical sites... a new shared/borrowed space on the mainland at League City, our faculty clinic Stewart Rd location and temporary space in the Fast Track area of the ER. We are in negotiations at present for the relocation of our hospital service, which I expect to take place in the next week or two. This will be a temporary measure until the John Sealy Hospital on campus reopens.

We will be recruiting for a class of 4 in the 2009 Match and have just as of yesterday begun to issue interview invitations. I anticipate that we will interview about 40 - 45 applicants. You can help us greatly by keeping your application status up to date and advising whether you plan to accept or decline the invitation to interview once received.

Thank you for your interest in our program. If you enjoy being part of building something new and dynamic, you will find great experiences, training and professional community as we emerge from the effects of hurricane Ike!

Dear Applicant,

Thank you for your interest in our residency training program.

Our basic requirements for consideration for interview include:

• graduation from medical school within the past five years (not flexible)
• passage of USMLE I and II, including CSA (preferably on first attempt) OR COMLEX for Osteopathic students. Obviously, the better your scores, the stronger will be your application.
• some U.S. clinical experience
• three letters of recommendation, at least two of which MUST be from family doctors.

We accept applications only through ERAS. Please do not email me long attachments in an attempt to circumvent the process because I will not read them. If you meet our criteria outlined above, then apply through ERAS. This will ensure that your application is reviewed.

Osteopathic students may apply to our program through either or both Match processes, however you will only be guaranteed a dual-accredited slot by matching through the AOA Match.

We will begin our interview season for the class entering in 2009 in September 2008 for Osteopathic students and October 2008 for all. We hope to conclude interviews by end of January 2009. We will begin screening applications immediately as they become available through ERAS. We will schedule interviews until we have interviewed sufficient candidates to fill our class, so you are encouraged to apply early.

Our program does sponsor J1 visas. Our program does NOT sponsor H-1 visas.
UTMB does NOT sponsor externships or observerships for persons who have already graduated from medical school.

Please see our Residency website for more detailed information regarding our program. For specific questions that may not be covered, please contact our recruiter, Mr. Louis Johnston. His contact information is listed on the webpage.

Lisa R. Nash, D.O.
Program Director
UTMB Family Medicine Residency