Vicki Hamm receives Chancellor’s Gold U for April

Vicki Hamm

For the past 32 years, Vicki Hamm has been the point person to thousands of residents who make UNMC their home for specialty training stretches lasting one to eight years.

As administrator of the Graduate Medical Education (GME) Program in UNMC’s College of Medicine, Hamm advises each resident on a range of issues from program requirements, payroll and licensing, work hours and orientation to UNMC.

“It’s important that they have a point person,” Hamm said. “The GME office is like the HR department for residents.”

For her commitment, knowledge and oversight of UNMC’s Graduate Medical Education, Hamm has received the Chancellor’s Gold U Award for April.

“I was honored and humbled to be selected,” Hamm said. “I’ve said it a million times, ‘If I’ve been successful, it’s because I’ve surrounded myself with people a lot smarter than myself.'”

Hamm is a resource to UNMC’s 450 residents or house officers, 40 residency coordinators and 40 program directors. The GME office has institutional oversight to make sure all residency requirements and accreditation standards are fulfilled.

“Vicki provides exceptional service and assistance to the house officers and to the departmental residency coordinators and program directors who work with her,” said Robert Wigton, M.D., associate dean for GME. “She makes everyone feel that she cares about their problems and will do her best to solve them. She always gives the extra time and effort it takes to do things right.”

“She is clearly a shining star for UNMC,” said one of her many nominators.

“As a program director, I couldn’t maintain accreditation without her accessibility, knowledge and attention to detail and all with a pleasant smile,” another nominator said. “Without her, this institution would not have the excellent teaching status that it currently has. Vicki Hamm is the backbone of the curriculum to make sure it meets and exceeds national standards.”

An advocate for residents, Hamm receives calls and e-mails from past residents who are pleasantly surprised and relieved to know Hamm is still the primary contact for GME information.

It doesn’t take new residents long to know whom to contact regarding GME issues.

“When they see my e-mail pop up 75 times in a year they remember my name,” she said, dropping names of faculty members she previously assisted as residents who are now nationally recognized in their fields.

“It’s gratifying to see them go through training and become successful practicing physicians,” she said. “The best part of my job is working with all the coordinators, program directors and residents. That’s what keeps me in it.”

The Cook, Neb., native joined UNMC in 1975 after graduating from the Lincoln School of Commerce in Lincoln, Neb.

“I was fascinated with the health care industry,” said Hamm, the daughter of a nurse’s aid at Johnson County Hospital in Tecumseh, Neb., where UNMC’s Mike Sorrell, M.D., first practiced general medicine.

“Dr. Sorrell took my tonsils out and was our family doctor,” she said.

A rewarding job Vicki Hamm talks about her job as administrator of UNMC’s Graduate Medical Education office. Hamm received the April 2008 Chancellor’s Gold U Award for outstanding performance at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

Hamm’s tenure with UNMC almost ended after the first year. She already had accepted a job with an insurance company when she received an 11th hour offer from Dr. Wigton, who had recently started as associate dean for GME.

“This was an opportunity to work in the dean’s office so I decided to take it and have never regretted the decision,” she said. “At the time, I essentially knew that students wore short white coats and residents wore long white coats.

“I’m really blessed to work with Dr. Wigton. He has taught me a vast amount about graduate medical education.”

Unlike other institutions, UNMC’s GME is administered through the College of Medicine, rather than hospital-based residencies. The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), which is responsible for the accreditation of post-M.D. medical training programs within the United States, regulates how institutions do business.

“It’s important because residents are still trainees learning their specialty,” Hamm said.

A penchant for details, Hamm knows the required accreditation guidelines and standards for each of UNMC’s 36 accredited residencies and organizes internal, mini-site visits in preparation for that program’s ACGME site visit.

Her knowledge is so extensive that Hamm has become a national expert on GME coordination, Dr. Wigton said. She has authored a book for GME directors and administrators titled “The Graduate Medical Education Committee Handbook,” which will be released in May.

“It’s not going to be a best seller,” Hamm quipped. “There are only about 800 academic medical institutions that administer residency programs.”

Writing the book served as professional development, she said.

“It really was an opportunity for me to examine the regulations by which we live and a chance for me to better understand them,” Hamm said. “It was a great learning process to look at how things are done and ask: Is this adequate?”

A sports enthusiast, Hamm played competitive volleyball until age 42, and then followed her daughter who played in college. Hamm now officiates high school metro volleyball games, does work in her backyard, which abuts Fontenelle Forest, and coordinates UNMC’s Alpha Omega Alpha activities.

Her daughter, now 27, is an environmental scientist in San Francisco. Hamm plans to visit her 25-year-old son, a mechanical engineer, this fall in Aberdeen, Scotland, where he works for an oil field service company.

Until then, the den mother to UNMC’s residents will welcome every new resident to UNMC and say goodbye to those who have finished their training.