Jordan Burr, DO and Austin Helmink, MD
Welcome to the University of Nebraska Medical Center Department of Pathology, Microbiology, and Immunology. As your chief residents for this academic year, we are excited to introduce you to our program.
Our program offers fantastic opportunities in all aspects of anatomic and clinical pathology education and practice. As the major academic and referral medical center for Nebraska, we average over 60,000 surgical specimens per year from all organ systems. The practice of surgical pathology involves grossing, intraoperative diagnoses (in-house and by digital pathology at affiliated medical facilities), and subspecialty sign-out. We are a major center for solid organ and bone marrow transplants, and benefit from regularly performed donor organ assessment and post-transplant biopsies. We host one of the largest lymphoma study groups in the country and participate in the diagnosis of a robust volume of hematolymphoid malignancies. Our hospital autopsy service is very active with an average of 150 medical autopsies per year. Recently, the department has significantly invested in digital pathology/informatics, and residents are involved in diagnosis, educational and tumor board presentations via digitally scanned slides.
The clinical pathology service is managed by experts in clinical chemistry, blood banking/transfusion medicine, molecular pathology, and microbiology. In addition to the busy hospital microbiology laboratory, our department uniquely houses the state public health laboratory and the federally funded biocontainment unit for BSL4 infectious agents, which gained major headlines during the COVID and Ebola outbreaks. Our apheresis service has one of the largest sickle cell exchange programs in the world and performs approximately 2000 procedures per year. Our state-of-the-art molecular pathology lab has numerous next-generation sequencing platforms, rapidly growing test assays with utility in oncology, transplant tissue typing, forensic analysis etc.
Through the four years of our combined AP/CP program, the residents have developed varied sub-specialty interests and have accepted fellowships at their institute and specialty of choice. Notably, our department also offers in-house fellowships in surgical pathology, gastrointestinal pathology, hematopathology, clinical microbiology and molecular pathology; the latest addition being transfusion medicine (from 2025).
In terms of lifestyle, Omaha is one of the “hidden gems” of the country. While sustaining a robust college-age population from both the University of Nebraska and Creighton, you will quickly find that the city is an easy to navigate, comparatively inexpensive place to live with an impressive food and art scene, and plenty of fun activities for individuals and families. Our formal benefits are also highly competitive. Please browse the information on this website and feel free to reach out to our program coordinator, Kim Martin (kimberly.martin@unmc.edu) or to one of us (joburr@unmc.edu or austin.helmink@unmc.edu) if there is anything we can do to help.