Celebrating our people
How is it June already? We are almost halfway through the calendar year and approaching the end of another academic and fiscal year. It is impossible not to get swept up in the excitement of all our trainees passing through one set of doors and headed toward their next. A couple weeks ago we watched our medical school commencement, yesterday we celebrated our Chief Residents at Grand Rounds as well as the winners of the resident-voted awards, and next week we will celebrate all our residency graduates. I had a great time at last year’s residency graduation and was so impressed by the video tributes that accompany the celebration. So many ways to say we care and that we are proud of you! We are also seeing the first few division fellowship celebrations from GI and Cardiology with more to come before the month ends. The recaps and photos from all these celebrations will get gathered under one tag: #Graduation 2026. I hope you will follow along as we celebrate our amazing trainees!
Upi’s “Oh, WOW” moment
Another recent impressive showcase and celebration of our trainees and our educators was Medical Education Day, organized by our Vice Chair for Education Dr. Manish Suneja and Neurology’s Dr. Tracey Cho. I was pleased to see so many of our faculty members participating, from the awards committee to programming and teaching breakout sessions. Those sessions covered a variety of medical education topics, whether perennial ones like giving feedback or “hotter” topics like when and how to incorporate the use of artificial intelligence. Some of our faculty also helped judge at the poster session. Almost half of the posters on display were presented by our trainees and educators. Nearly two dozen innovative ideas, carefully and methodically demonstrated with rigor and a lot of creativity. My congrats to all the participants and my thanks to all the mentors listed at the link above who guided their trainees through this process.
Photo for Reflection
Graduations and education are not the only things worth celebrating lately. Not long after UI Health Care Week, all of us came together at the beautiful Hancher Auditorium to recognize a year’s worth of achievements by our faculty, staff, and trainees across the enterprise. Some of the awards given at the inaugural Changing Medicine Changing Lives celebration we already knew about on this page, like Dr. Joseph Dillon’s Thielen Award and Dr. Martha Carvour’s Lynton Award. But one I had not heard about before was the Improving Our Workplace Award (IOWA—clever!), which went to the nursing team in our Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit. The IOWA honors teams and individuals who show initiative, creativity, and have demonstrable and sustainable impact. This team delivers high-stakes care for some of our sickest patients and by focusing on outcomes and safe and efficient processes they meet those patients’ needs every day. Theirs was just one of the many impressive stories I heard that night, including the winner of the Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award, Dr. Evelyn Ross-Shapiro. Congrats to all! You can see photos from the event here. I can’t wait for next year’s!
Finally, just a reminder that next week, June 11, will be the next Quarterly Department Update during Thursday’s Grand Rounds at noon. I will be joined by two GI clinicians, Drs. Munish Ashat and Abdullah Abbasi, who will talk about the growth of ERCP services in the region. They have a good story to tell about a team solving a problem of access while also ensuring quality and safety. I will also talk about recent news in the department. But I will also pose a couple of questions to you about where you think our research mission currently stands and what your thoughts are on department priorities in the near- and long-term future. I hope to see you there and that we have a productive conversation.