Laura Ebers, MD, was nearing the end of her workday and walking down a hallway in the Durham Outpatient Center when a voice behind her said, “Hey, doc.”
“The hallway was empty, and it took me a second or two to realize the man behind me was talking to me,” she said — adding she was not used to being called “doctor.”
Dr. Ebers, a UNMC graduate, was one of 230 new house officers UNMC welcomed to the medical center this summer.
This year’s class includes 165 new residents and 65 new fellows. Among the new residents, 51 are graduates of the UNMC College of Medicine. Additionally, 28 current UNMC residents transferred to UNMC PGY 2 specialty programs or fellowship programs on July 1.
Dr. Ebers stayed at UNMC after her May 2025 graduation to begin her residency in general surgery.
With the UNMC Office of Graduate Medical Education helping residents settle in, Dr. Ebers said, she was free to concentrate on doing a good job as she enters this latest transition in her medical career.
“Now that I’m carrying more responsibility, I don’t want to let my team or my patients down,” she said.
The GME Office is designed to support house officers such as Dr. Ebers, said Chandra Are, MBBS, associate dean for graduate medical education.
“We strive to make the transition from medical student to resident or fellow as easy as possibly for our incoming house officers,” Dr. Are said. “This is likely one of the most important transitions in a physician’s career — transitioning from a dependent medical student to an independent physician. Their focus should indeed be on the patients and their education and ours on ensuring a productive and successful learning environment. Our team is dedicated to helping smooth out any bumps along the way.”
Dr. Are said he is grateful for GME Office team, which consists of Erin Snow, Rachel Nelsen, Amy Guziec and Arianne Marcoux. They are instrumental in ensuring that the annual orientation for the largest onboarding of new employees on the UNMC campus goes well.
“We onboarded 230 house officers this summer,” he said. “This is an extremely labor-intensive process that involves coordination between many entities including our own campus, licensing offices,regulatory bodies and, not to forget, processes related to visas, etc. Thanks to the diligent efforts of our GME Office, we were able to ensure that the orientation went smoothly.
“We are, as always, pleased and proud to welcome this new batch of house officers to our campus to continue this eternal cycle of training physicians.”
Dr. Ebers said that although she misses her many medical school friends who are doing residencies in other locations, she has had fun working with the new people she’s met – and she has supplied “living in Omaha” advice to her fellow surgical residents, none of whom are from UNMC.
“We’ve been pretty busy so far, so I know some of them haven’t been out to see the fun parts of Omaha yet,” she said. “But I’ve made my recommendations.”