There is a second holiday in February where I get to express deep affection and admiration? Sign me up. Today is “Thank a Resident and Fellow Day” and I am so honored to spend a few minutes here singing the praises of the beating heart of our department and UI Health Care: our internal medicine residents and the fellows in our many subspecialties. Ask anyone about their experience working with residents and fellows and you will almost always hear how exciting it is, how energizing. Trainee enthusiasm and creativity are not just infectious but sustaining. We become faculty in academic medicine because teaching is important to us, of course, but what I never anticipated is just how much I would learn from them. Certainly, they are fresh off MD and residency programs and board examinations and they are fast, fast thinkers. They can often hit a diagnosis or rattle through a differential quickly, but there are intangibles that come from working alongside them. Sometimes it’s an efficiency or a more elegant way of navigating a tricky patient encounter. Other times they teach us how easy it can be to adapt to change or a challenge. We don’t lose the capacity to grow when we become senior faculty, but I think it can be easy to forget what it means to tap into our own reservoirs of grit. Even as medicine itself expands and changes, our residents and fellows show us how to incorporate “the new,” like surfing on a wave. It takes balance, but they make it look effortless. And often, pretty fun.

I am grateful to our Vice Chair for Education Dr. Manish Suneja, who somehow manages to reflect that same energy and excitement of every resident class every time he walks into a room. We are lucky to have him at Iowa, and our residents are especially lucky to have him leading their program. He suggested we ask some faculty and staff to film some short thank-you videos to let our trainees know how much they matter to us in recognition of today. My thanks to everyone who took the time to record these words of gratitude. What you will hear is more than just an acknowledgement of how hard they work. And they work so hard. They spend many long hours in the clinics and the wards, caring for the very sickest Iowans. They are also building relationships with their colleagues, covering for each other, helping each other through these often grueling but worthwhile years of training. As their faculty attendings or the staff we are fortunate to get to support them in these first stages of their career-long journey in medicine.

Photo for reflection
The Slieve League Cliffs on the coast of Ireland rise almost 2,000 feet above the Atlantic Ocean. For more than 1,500 years, this location has been a site of Christian pilgrimage and there is a path along the cliff’s edge that countless other people have walked over the centuries. There is a chapel dedicated to a monk that died in the late 6th century and even some stone huts near this peak that early monks used for beehives. The natural beauty of the view across the water is inspiring, but that sense of being one more link in an impossibly long chain of humans to walk over this same dirt is humbling. It’s important that medicine uses state-of-the-art and evidence-based tools, methods, and therapeutics. It should be cutting edge. But there are some elements, like the Hippocratic oath or the bond and the trust that is built between a mentor and a trainee, that I am pleased to see remain timeless.

Upi’s “Oh, WOW” moment
Speaking of tradition, I am always excited to see each month’s Internal Medicine Honor Roll. Not even two years old now, I think this has become well-established and is a great venue for colleagues to praise colleagues. If you step back a little bit, you see the cross-section of the scope of our department’s activity. Praise for clinicians at the North Liberty medical campus, praise for administrative support in the planning and execution of a division event, praise for integrating education and patient care. We are a busy department, and everyone is digging deep every day. I hope you are looking to your left and your right to marvel at your colleagues’ efforts, and then taking a minute to let them know they’re seen.

Finally
By now you may have seen that the voting has begun for the U.S. News & World Report rankings of the nation’s best hospitals and specialties. This summary on The Loop does a great job explaining how the rankings work, why they’re important, and how voting-eligible faculty members can play a big part in how UI Health Care fares. Please keep an eye out for ways you can help and for making your voice heard. Your vote really does count!