Residency

Letter from the Program Director

 
Reflecting on the past academic year, I think that it is best characterized as a year of change, both expected and unexpected. Once again the residency graduates will move on to a variety of additional training and career paths. Two of our graduates will be moving to the Washington DC area for fellowship training. Dr. Melissa Thomas will be pursuing an Emergency Ultrasonography Fellowship, and Dr. Jenn Stuth will enter a Disaster Medicine Fellowship. The other graduates will enter clinical practice in North Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota, and Hawaii. It is always gratifying for me to reflect on these graduates and think about their first few months of residency training and then witnessing each of their stepwise development into highly functioning emergency physicians able to care for patients independently.

I am sure that the incoming class of residents will be just as impressive when they graduate. This is the second year that we have matched eight new residents for the class of 2015. Our first year class of residents includes Peter Anaradian (St. Louis University), Andrew Barnett (University of Iowa), Erica Carlsson and Paul Travis (Creighton University), Russell Dunn (Drexel University), Daniel Kalin and Andrew Linnaus (UNMC), and Lin Naing (University of Wisconsin). This year’s applicant class was especially competitive. In fact, there were no unmatched emergency medicine residency positions after the match. To me, this is an excellent illustration of emergency medicine’s increasing popularity and competitiveness.

One unexpected surprise this year was the postponement of our re-accreditation Residency Review Committee site visit, which was supposed to take place in February 2012. It just so happens that the ACGME is transitioning to a new accreditation process over the next year or so. The details are still being finalized, but several changes will take place under the new accreditation system. Behavioral “milestones” that are specific to the specialty and post-graduate year of training and align with the six ACGME core competencies will be implemented as the main evaluative tool for resident performance. These will be standardized across all emergency medicine residencies. In addition, accreditation RRC site visits will likely occur less frequently, but be replaced in part by more frequent electronic reporting to the RRC. Much of this upcoming year will be devoted toward updating our current practices and reporting to comply with the new system, and we are anticipating that the date of our first site visit under the new accreditation system will take place sometime in late 2013 or early 2014.

Ms. Margaret Galkowski is the residency’s new Program Coordinator beginning this year. She has held a variety of positions at Creighton University Medical Center in the past and will be transitioning from currently being a Pulmonary Fellowship Coordinator of eight fellows to our new Emergency Medicine Program Coordinator for twenty-three residents this year on our way to twenty-four next year. Dr. Claudia Barthold (Associate PD), Dr. Chad Branecki (Assistant PD), and I are very pleased with her addition to this program and are looking forward to working with her in future years.

Lance H Hoffman, M.D.
Associate Professor and Program Director
Emergency Medicine Residency Program
University of Nebraska College of Medicine