Program director of the month

Aaron Lanik, MD

Aaron Lanik, MD

  • Name: Aaron Lanik, MD
  • Medical school attended: UNMC
  •  Location of your residency/fellowship training: UNMC Family Medicine Advanced Rural Training Track

 What residency/fellowship program at UNMC are you serving as program director for? Family Medicine Rural Training Track

Number of trainees: Six to seven per year for three years

How long have you been the program director: Two years

What made you chose to become the program director? It allowed me to combine my passions in medicine, teaching and rural health care. As a former rural family physician, I understand the need and difficulties associated with rural practice, and I can use my experiences to recruit and teach residents about practice in rural areas.

What challenges do you foresee in graduate medical education in the future?: Currently while in the pandemic, I am worried we are becoming too focused on COVID-19, because that care is what is needed acutely, as unfortunately it has filled up our clinics and hospitals. But I worry the current generation of students/residents may not be getting the full educational experience that they will need to practice after residency. Post-pandemic, the largest challenge will be related to meeting all of the ever-changing and often competing requirements put forth from the various entities associated with the GME system that may take away from education opportunities of residents during their brief time with us. This may leave them with potential knowledge gaps or general discomfort when they are practicing on their own. 

What are the strengths of your training program?

As a one-two program, our residents have the opportunity to train for one year in an urban academic environment in Omaha followed by two years in one of four rural communities (Grand Island, Kearney, North Platte and Scottsbluff). This opportunity allows residents to practice in academic and community environments taking advantage of different teaching atmospheres and communities.

Each of the four rural associate directors at the rural sites — Dr. Richard Fruehling (Grand Island), Dr. Robert Messbarger (Kearney), Dr. Shawn Murdock (North Platte) and Dr. Kent Lacey (Scottsbluff) — have years and in some cases decades of experience training the residents at their respective sites, and it is their community and medical knowledge that helps our residents flourish after they leave Omaha.

Our program coordinator, Marlene Hawver, has helped me tremendously in growing in my current role as well as keeping everyone organized and on task despite being separated from Omaha by hundreds of miles. (Grand Island, 150 miles, Kearney, 185 miles, North Platte, 280 miles, Scottsbluff, 455 miles).

We have tremendous support from the UNMC Department of Family Medicine and the faculty, who provide an excellent training environment to give the residents a good base of knowledge to build on once they move to the rural sites.

We also have tremendous support of rural faculty to develop the necessary skills to be rural family physicians. If not for the dedication of our rural community physicians in all specialties who value training our family medicine residents, the rural training track would not be successful.

Having four unique communities allows our applicants to find the site that works best to meet their goals of training. Although site each operates under the ACGME and program requirements, each site has their own unique skill set and focus which allows flexibility for our residents to meet their specific training goals.

List some accomplishments that you are proud of:

I was a full-spectrum family physician providing ambulatory, inpatient, emergency, obstetrical, nursing home and procedural care in rural Nebraska for over six years.

I was on the Board of Directors for the Nebraska Academy of Family Physicians from 2013 to 2020, including serving as president of the board representing more than 750 Nebraska family physicians in 2018-2019.

Tell us three things about you that others may not know:

  • I am the father of three daughters who were born in three consecutive years in 2015, 2016 and 2017.
  • My favorite vacation involves sitting on the back of a boat with no cell reception.
  • I continue to live in the rural community that I grew up in and live less than five minutes away from my parents and extended relatives.

1 comment

  1. Hannah Christiansen says:

    Congrats Aaron!

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