Rich's article

long time

I had no idea so much time had passed since I last blogged. It seems like only a few days ago that the RIF occurred. It is still painful.

Some good things are happening though. I heard today that alumnus Pompeyo Chavez and his wife had a healthy baby boy today. Also current R2 Sashi Braga and his wife welcomed a healthy baby girl to their family this week. Congratulations to all of them!

Also, faculty member Jim King who was affected in the RIF has been hired by the Baytown FMRP, so he will stay in the area. They are adding a great faculty member to their program. Our loss is their gain. I'm happy that Jim found a good spot in a good program.

Former Dept of FM member Susan Berkley PA who was working for the Dept of Surgery most recently and affected by the RIF has accepted a position at the 4Cs Clinic.

A community hospitalist physician at one of our community hospital partners today agreed to take the R3s onto her hospital service to finish out their last required block so they are on track to finish their curriculum and graduate on schedule. We are still waiting to see if John Sealy reopens on January 5th as projected. If so, we will staff that service with R1s and R2s.

Things are coming along with our new clinic space at UHC. We have been plagued by computer bugs and glitches since opening but it seems that some significant progress was made yesterday in resolving most if not all of the current problems.

Scheduling has been a major problem since the RIF, because key administrative staff were lost who normally managed that function. This week saw major strides toward figuring out a new process for dealing with scheduling and we are all hopeful that it will be simpler and easier to manage from January forward.

Recruiting is going very well, much better in fact than I ever dreamed it would this year. We appreciate the support shown by our applicants and are grateful that we've been able to progress with this more or less as normal.

I think we are all very much looking forward to the holiday break. I'm hopeful that the new year will bring good things for Galveston Island and UTMB.

2008 ALSO Course

As usual, I had a blast at our annual multi-residency ALSO Course, held in Baytown last week. I enjoyed working with both our residents and the others and working with my FMOB faculty colleagues from across the region.

I think the residents had fun too, or at least if anyone didn't, they didn't tell me! Several of you commented to me that you learned a lot and had a good time. And now you all have the basic tools you need for managing urgent and emergent situations in L&D. You just need some experience putting them into practice.

Click on the photo to access the photo set.

Play-Doh Workshop

We recently had our Circumcision workshop for the interns during Orientation. They were all quite excited about getting to play with Play-Doh during this experience. Unfortunately, we had a few untoward outcomes with detachment of certain important anatomic structures, but in the end it was a successful activity. And a good time was had by all, including me! What a great group of interns!

Welcome, Class of 2011!!!

Michael Crawford – University of Texas Medical Branch – Galveston
Richard Donaldson – W. Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine
Cesar Gerez - Universidad Autonoma de Tamaulipas, Tampico Mexico
Eduardo Guerra Valencia - Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Peru
Toni Hernandez – University of Texas Medical Branch – Galveston
Jose Rodriguez – Universidad de Oriente, Venezuela
Lisset Parets - Saint George's University, Grenada
Bhanu Yadiki - Jss Medical College, India

filled!

We have filled our incoming class for 2008!!

I'd like to thank the applicants who made the trek to Galveston to interview. We have selected our final candidate and as soon as I have a chance to notify each of those who interviewed, I will post our new class here. We had 830-some-odd applications through ERAS for our two positions, so it was an extremely competitive field. That is not counting the emailed applications, phone calls and attempted faxes that we received. True to our word, we screened only those applications submitted through ERAS. Unfortunately, many people did no research to know that we would not accept email applications and I found myself deleting massive amounts of email several times a day just to keep my email working.

The Scramble (or re-Match as some now like to call it) is always a challenge. It's a much higher stakes, higher stress level process for all involved than the regular interview season, and that's saying something.

My staff did a wonderful job answering the phones, often redirecting frustrated applicants to ERAS submission and offering helpful advice. They screened calls directed at me so that I was able to focus on the business at hand, which was screening applications, selecting and interviewing appropriate applicants and making tough decisions. I'd like to thank them as well. If you tried and weren't able to get through to me directly, please know that my staff did pass on all messages from faculty members and medical schools and all applications referrenced in those messages were personally screened by me.

I also need to thank the faculty and residents who participated in the selection, pre-screening and interview process. In particular my residents found Scramble stressful and I was proud of the way they handled it. We would not have been as successful as we were in selecting our final two members of the class without the residents' help.

We have a great group of residents here at UTMB-FMR, and I'm confident our incoming class will continue the tradition.