For Your Health
For Your Health

News from the University of North Dakota School of Medicine & Health Sciences

Posts Categorized
From the Dean

From the Dean: Exercise is medicine

Categories: From the Dean

By virtue of my administrative and academic positions at UND and at your School of Medicine and Health Sciences, along with my clinical role as a cardiologist, I have the opportunity to talk with a wide spectrum of individuals, including potential and current students, residents-in-training, physicians and other health professionals engaged in clinical practice, researchers, […]

From the Dean: Evaluating our performance

Categories: From the Dean

Each year around this time, supervisors are expected to do a performance evaluation on most UND employees (both faculty and staff members). This is a requirement of the North Dakota University System as well as UND (and a best business practice, by the way). A slightly different evaluation rubric is followed for faculty, relative to […]

From the Dean: It’s awards season!

Categories: From the Dean

In follow-up to last week’s column where I discussed work/life balance and whether a career in healthcare delivery is a calling or a job (I posited that it’s both), last Saturday’s SMHS Medical Student Awards Gala, sponsored by the medical student classes of 2026 and 2027, reinforced the concept that tomorrow’s doctors certainly see part […]

From the Dean: Forever UND

Categories: From the Dean

Continuing the philanthropy theme from last week’s column, I’m currently at the winter meeting of the UND Alumni Association & Foundation (AAF) Board of Directors, along with the senior leadership teams from UND and the Foundation. We’ve been meeting since yesterday morning and the meeting is scheduled to finish late this afternoon. The major theme […]

From the Dean: Reducing debt and increasing gifts

Categories: From the Dean

I had a most fulfilling experience recently as I read some of the thank you notes that students at the UND SMHS sent to donors who provided scholarship and other financial support to the students for their studies here. As you may know, the cost of higher education has skyrocketed in general and has placed […]

From the Dean: The evolution of patient care

Categories: From the Dean

Susan and I recently attended a continuing medical education (CME) course in cardiology sponsored by the Mayo Clinic. As you probably know, CME credits are required for physicians and other healthcare providers to maintain their state licenses to practice and deliver clinical care. We’ve been to prior Mayo Clinic CME courses and – editorial comment […]

From the Dean: Sending medical students off to North Dakota’s hospitals and clinics

Categories: From the Dean

This past Wednesday the School celebrated the outstanding achievements of several students in the medical student Class of 2026 during the annual Sophomore Awards ceremony, held in the Charles H. Fee, MD Auditorium in the SMHS building in Grand Forks. The ceremony also marks the transition of the medical students to the clinical component of […]

From the Dean: Finalizing our strategic plan

Categories: From the Dean

As we welcome 2024 and students return to their studies, I thought it might be productive to outline some of the School’s priorities and areas of focus in this new year. Recall that UND, like most academic institutions, operates on an academic and fiscal year that runs from July to June, in contrast to the […]

From the Dean: Rounding out the year

Categories: From the Dean

The winter academic semester at UND ends today. It has been a busy week! Winter Commencement for undergraduates takes place today, with two ceremonies – the first is at 1 p.m. and is for the following UND schools and colleges: Arts and Sciences, Engineering and Mines, Nursing and Professional Disciplines, and Medicine and Health Sciences. […]

From the Dean: A healthy dose of holiday cheer

Categories: From the Dean

As the fall semester winds down, holiday celebrations abound! This past week was busy with events at UND and the SMHS. On Monday, CEO DeAnna Carlson-Zink and her fantastic teammates at the UND Alumni Association and Foundation (UNDAAF) sponsored a reception for the UND family and especially benefactors of UND who are in the area. […]

From the Dean: Reporting back from ‘Learn Serve Lead’

Categories: From the Dean

We just held our debriefing session for those of us who attended the recent Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) annual meeting known as Learn Serve Lead. We joined over 4,500 colleagues from medical schools across the country to compare best practices and discuss common challenges. As promised in a prior column, what follows is […]

From the Dean: COVID and the challenge of evidence-based science

Categories: From the Dean

A just-published article in the highly regarded journal Annals of Internal Medicine raises an important issue related to health science student education. I hesitate somewhat to bring it up because the report relates to the treatment of COVID, and we all are suffering from COVID fatigue and are tired talking (and hearing) about it. That […]

From the Dean: Strengthening the patient-provider bond

Categories: From the Dean

I, along with about a dozen team members from our medical education program, just got back from the annual meeting of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) that was held in Seattle, Wash. All of the schools in the country offering an M.D. degree belong to the AAMC, which is “dedicated to transforming health […]