Kudos to Pompeyo!!

Please see the current issue of Family Practice News, which recognizes Pompeyo’s research on COPD and his recent poster presentation at the annual meeting of the North American Primary Care Research Group!!

Dr. Khiran Shokar also tells me that his paper will be submitted for publication soon.

I am so proud of Pompeyo’s accomplishments! Please join me in congratulating him when you see him next!

Reminders

Hi Everyone... just a few reminders about upcoming meeting requirements:

December - R3s semi-annual meeting with PD, R1 meetings with Faculty Advisors

January - R1 Quarterly evaluation by FM faculty, R1s semi-annual meeting with PD, R2 meetings with Faculty Advisors

AOA APPROVED!!!

On November 2, 2006, the AOA Program & Trainee Review Council granted APPROVAL of the NEW Internship training program at the University of Texas Medical Branch - Galveston in Galveston, TX!!!

We are so excited to achieve this very important distinction!

Unfortunately, we did not receive our approval in time to register for the 2007 AOA Match, BUT, osteopathic students can still match with us through the NRMP for 2007.

Please contact us if you need additional information or have questions.
409.772.0641 or lrnash@utmb.edu.

it could only happen to Marisol...

Who would ever have the bad (?) luck for the restaurant where Journal Club is being hosted to ALSO have a group of professional clowns having a meeting at the same time?! I missed the Journal Club, but the stories sure were entertaining!

What a great group!

Here they are... the FM residents of 2006! This photo was taken two weeks ago, while everyone was here taking the In-Training Exam. Everyone studied really hard... some thought the exam was no problem, some thought it was hard. I hope everyone did well... I know they put in the effort and they deserve to do well. This is one outstanding group of residents and I'm really proud of them.

Thanksgiving Luncheon

Residency Staff - Jackie, Linda, Angie

Dr. Janice Smith & Chief Resident Dr. Williams

a few of the Family Medicine Faculty

Residents - Dr. Pettit, Dr. Schnaiderman

Residency Staff - Linda, Angie, Louis

A great meal and a good time was had by all! A big "thank you" to Dr. Thompson for providing the food and the time for us all to sit down together and celebrate.

Recruiting 2007 Update

As of today, all applicants with active, complete applications who have not received an interview invitation will be wait-listed for reconsideration in the event we have cancellations. We will try to get an email out to everyone in this category sometime this week.

We have a number of incomplete applications, which WILL still be considered once they are complete. We ARE still accepting applications.

If you are one of our 18 applicants with an open interview invitation but have not scheduled your interview, please do so AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!! If you have decided not to interview in Galveston, please also let us know that so we may invite someone from our wait-list.

I hope the interview season is going well for everyone. We are extremely pleased with this year's applicant class. Those of you who've interviewed with us already, please let us know if any further questions have arisen since your interview.

Best wishes, LRN

Dickens on the Strand

There is LOTS of cool stuff to do in Galveston, but Dickens on the Strand is definitely one of my favorites! For tons more great photos, visit www.webshots.com and type "Dickens on Strand" in the search box. The photo above is Becky Hamilton (FMR Staff), Susan Berkley (PA for FMC) and me (Dr. Nash) all dressed up for Dickens last year.

Applicants interviewing on December 4th might want to think about coming in early to participate in the festivities. Visit www.galveston.com for additional hotel reservations.

STFM proposals accepted

The Society of Teachers of Family Medicine just announced all accepted presentations for the annual Spring STFM meeting to be held in Chicago, April 25-29, 2007.

Our program will be represented by the following:
Lisa R. Nash, DO, Mike Callaway, Becky Hamilton, Clarence Williams, MD - 45-min. lecture/discussion entitled "Observation-Based Evaluation Tools for Family Medicine Residencies"

Mike Callaway, Lisa R. Nash, DO - 45-min. lecture/discussion entitled "Combining the Scores You Have to Create the Scores You Need"

Lisa R. Nash, DO, Mike Callaway - 45-minute lecture/discussion entitled "Do you Know the Reliability of Ratings by Faculty in Your Program?"

Indu Kunchar, MD, Becky Hamilton, Lisa R. Nash, DO, Ron Williams - scholastic poster entitled "Cross Cultural Curriculum for Family Medicine Residents"

All of these presentations have been made possible through our residency training grant from HRSA. We are very excited and looking forward to reporting excellent work which represents the UTMB FMR!

Additionally, the Pre-Doctoral Program will be represented by Gurjeet Shokar, MD and Robert Bulik - 15 minute Peer-In-Progress presentation entitled "Teaching Doctor-Patient Communication Skills Through Web-Based Clinical Cases"

in the news

Drs. Thompson (Chairman, UTMB Dept. of Family Medicine) and Chavez (FMR Chief) were both recently in the news! Check out the story at this link.

In costume

Here is the Gold Team clinic staff having a good time yesterday! Susan brought a box of costumes, some people came in full costume and a good time was had by all. We have a great team!

10/27

What a week! I've been meaning to update this blog ALL WEEK and just now getting to it. It's been long work days every day this week, so I haven't quite caught up from being gone last week.

The end of last week I was in Santa Fe, attending the NIPDD... basically, the Program Directors fellowship. Learning how to be a more effective PD. It lasts through summer '07, and got off to a really good start. I'm looking forward to learning a lot and have already gotten some good tips we'll be implementing in our program. One of the projects we're required to do in the fellowship is a curriculum project, so if any of my current residents have suggestions for which area you'd like me to pick, please let me know! I'm thinking about an applied Practice Management project based on your own clinic numbers, Pedi Inpatient or the community service piece of Community Medicine. You may have other requests I haven't thought about though.

This has been a week of odd occurrences too... kind of unusual circumstances various residents have found themselves in. As you might expect, some had the potential for residents to get into some kind of trouble, with somebody! I've been really impressed with the professionalism demonstrated by you in your handling of the situations. Secondly, I am very much appreciative that you have filled me in. It is SO MUCH easier for me to be effective on your behalf when I already know your side of the story and someone else thinks I need to know about it or that I need to "do something". Good work! Keep it up!

And I'm not the only one noticing... I'd say in the past month, at least a half dozen different faculty have approached me for the purpose of commenting about what a great group of residents we have right now. You make me proud. :-)

Change of subject - for the applicants: based on a request from an applicant via the blog, we were able to send out an email through ERAS for applicants who will NOT be offered an interview. That went out last week. If your application was complete as of last week, and you did not receive a notification email, your application is still being considered.

We have in the ballpark of 65 interview slots. We've scheduled 35 interviews and extended an additional 15 invitations. Should we need to, we will add interview dates in early February. The season is going well, I continue to be excited about Match 2007.

Residents: quick reminders

November 3 & Nov. 6 - ITE exam. Check your schedule to see which date you're assigned. Good luck!! I'm hoping we're going to have a banner year.

November 15 - FM Dept Thanksgiving luncheon, PCP 2.268 from 11:45 to 1:00. See you there!

Season opener

Wow! It's that time, already! Interviews begin for us this week. This is such an exciting time of year for residents, faculty AND the new applicants! We're ready and looking forward to meeting our group of potential new residents. Wednesday 10/18 is day 1.

We didn't get through all of our new applications for last week quite yet... I was out of the office some and Louis was out of the office some, so if your application was completed last week and you haven't heard anything, that may be why. In reality, it will probably be another week before we catch up, because I have Residency business that will keep me out most of the coming week as well. We do still have interview spots available, so don't worry... more interview invitations are coming.

There was a question/comment to the last post that I thought I would answer here: Will we be sending rejection letters to those not invited? The answer is probably not. My initial thought was definitely not, because we have a small staff and I simply can't commit the resources in the midst of a very busy interview season. However, I need to talk to Louis about it before giving a final answer, because it may be possible to sort the applications and send a group email to let people know. It will not be possible to notify 250+ people why they individually were not invited. When we've completed our invitation process, I will post common characteristics of successful applications though.

Best wishes,
LRN

Weekly Recruiting Update

I am still so excited about our 2007 recruiting season! Applications continue to come in. As of yesterday, we have invited 36 applicants to interview and 23 of those have already reserved their interview dates. We anticipate that we will interview approximately 50 - 65 applicants this year, so we are well on our way to filling our calendar. This may be our first year to have to "wait-list" some applicants.

Last week I attended the Texas Medical Association Fall Summit. The TMA Council on Medical Education and the Subcommittee for Academic Physicians both met during the Summit. Workforce and medical education are at the top of the agenda for those groups, as you might expect, but also are becoming more and more of a state-wide (and national) concern. This bodes very well for Family Medicine, and especially Family Medicine residencies in Texas, I believe. There continues to be calls to expand residency training opportunities in Texas. As many of you will already know, Texas medical school seats were increased with this year's entering class. I encourage you to stop by www.coderedtexas.org and look at the reports on workforce and medical education.

The Subcommittee for Academic Physicians (I chair that group) is nearing completion of a Patient Safety Curriculum for medical students, residents and practicing physicians. It will be the first fully on-line, self-contained, free curriculum in Patient Safety. I'm quite proud of this work... we believe it is the first collaboration of all state academic medical centers and the state medical association to produce such a project. The curriculum will be housed on the TMA website. I will post the link when it is published.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Galveston - a great place to be

Everyone who lives here knows, but for those of you following from other parts of the country, Galveston is beautiful right now! The "cold fronts" that have started to push through have brought outstanding weather, with cooler temperatures ( 70 - 80's) and lower humidity. We're getting reasonable amounts of rain and the tropical foliage is gorgeous. This is the part of the year when I am particularly thankful to live on the island!

Particularly, some of you applicants from up north should weigh that in your decision process! Just check out the average daily temps for the year in Galveston! As if having a GREAT residency program wasn't enough, that ought to seal the deal for sure. :-)

Speaking of applicants and residency, we have reached the 3 week anniversary of ERAS opening for 2007. This means about 5 more weeks of heavy application activity. As of today, our program has received a total of 227 applications. Invitations for just shy of 1/2 our interview slots have been extended. If your application is not yet complete, I encourage you to get those missing documents in ASAP. If your application is complete and you've not heard from us, you can check the status of your application by contacting Mr. Louis Johnston. Email is preferred.

LRN

Kudos!

Congratulations and appreciation go out this week to Norberto, Liliana and Marisol for your great work in Urgent Care. Faculty took the time to email me and recognize your contributions. Keep up the good work!

Recruiting 2007

October interview dates are very popular this year. We have at least 1 applicant scheduled for each of our October dates and 10/23 has only one available remaining slot. Other interview months remain fairly open at this point.

I continue to screen applications daily as they become complete enough for initial review. Some interview invitations will continue to be issued as applications are reviewed. I anticipate we will issue a large group of invitations some time mid-October. I will continue to post updates at least weekly.

Recruiting 2007

We're off to a great start! Quality of applications continues to improve every year. It's shaping up to be a very competitive season based on applications I've reviewed thus far (14 days into the season).

This morning, I screened 171 applications. 15 outstanding applicants will have received invitations to interview by close of business today.

Applicants with substantially complete applications who do not receive an interview invitation by 5pm CST today can check with Louis Johnston regarding the status of your application. Possibilities include: 1) screened and placed on hold for possible future interview invitation, 2) incomplete and not yet screened or 3) screened to inactive status (does not meet our criteria).

There are a handful of applicants who applied despite not meeting our published criteria - most commonly the requirement to have graduated from medical school within the past 5 years. All of these applicants were placed on "inactive" status and do not need to contact Mr. Johnson to confirm. Decisions regarding applications currently on hold status will be forthcoming as we progress into the season.

Congratulations to our first group of 15 invited applicants, and I'm looking forward to meeting you!

Message from the President:

Dean of Medicine Resigns - Dr. Valerie M. Parisi to Remain a University Advisor

I am writing today to inform you that Dr. Valerie M. Parisi, dean of the School of Medicine and UTMB’s chief academic officer, has chosen to resign her administrative positions for personal reasons, effective immediately. I have asked Dr. Parisi to remain as an advisor to the university reporting directly to me, to ensure a smooth transition.

Although we are disappointed to lose a dean of Dr. Parisi’s stature, this is Dr. Parisi’s decision and I fully support it. I would like to personally acknowledge her service, and the contributions she has made to the university during the last two years. She is a talented and dedicated physician and we certainly wish her well.

Dr. Garland D. Anderson, longtime chair of obstetrics and gynecology, will continue to serve as interim dean of medicine, and Dr. Pamela G. Watson, dean of nursing, as interim chief academic officer.

These are challenging times for every health institution and our first responsibility is to ensure UTMB’s continued ability to serve the people of Texas and beyond. I have the utmost confidence in UTMB’s future and am personally committed to working closely with faculty, staff and students to move this great institution forward.


John D. Stobo, M.D.
UTMB President

ALSO 2006

The 2006 ALSO course was a rousing success! Five residency programs - UTMB, UT Houston, Baylor, San Jac and Methodist - were represented by their instructors and 60+ participants. It was the largest class we've had yet and we're so pleased that it all went so well. Every single registered participant passed the exams and achieved their certificate. The residents were so well-prepared that most worked their way through the mega-delivery in under 15 minutes, which was a treat for all.

I love doing this course and especially enjoy the opportunity to network with my colleagues in FM who do obstetrics in their practices.

The UTMB residents did exceptionally well and it was a real pleasure to see you represent us in such a good light. You knew your stuff, were professional and friendly and fun to work with. Many of the other residents were not as well prepared and were really anxious with the workshops and material. Once again, I'm proud of you all. Good work!

On another topic, the R2s are off to HealthFind this weekend. I know you'll have a great time there too. I hope many of you identify some good job prospects. Probably most of you know already... but HealthFind is how I found my private practice after residency. It's a really great program that we're lucky to have access to.

Again, good work everyone!