Posts Tagged

wynne

Not long ago I discussed the importance of mentoring for medical and health sciences students. We know from many surveys that mentors play a major role in helping students decide on career choices, like in what area of medicine to specialize. The importance of mentors was reinforced this past Monday when our Senior Associate Dean […]

This past Monday, the UND SMHS Advisory Council reported back to the Interim Higher Education Committee of the North Dakota Legislature, as is customary prior to each legislative assembly session and as required by law. As you might already know, the next session begins Jan. 5, 2021. I testified (virtually), along with Dave Molmen, the […]

Earlier this week, the building we own and operate in Minot that houses our Center for Family Medicine and our Minot-based family medicine residency suffered a major setback when a water main in the building burst unexpectedly and flooded the basement, causing substantial damage and necessitating the closure of the facility. Thanks to the dedicated […]

As UND faculty, my wife Dr. Susan Farkas and I had the opportunity to undergo COVID-19 testing before the start of classes this past Sunday during the screening event sponsored through NDSU and held in the Fargodome parking lot near our home in Fargo. We had pre-registered online and the entire process was slick, quick, […]

The recent trend in North Dakota of new COVID-19 cases is troubling, especially given the upcoming start of the fall semester for most UND students – especially undergraduates – next week. The number of active cases in the state has increased rapidly and worryingly in the recent past. Given the plan to restart face-to-face instruction […]

This past Tuesday there was a fun virtual event sponsored by Governor Burgum. It was a Virtual Summit on Innovative Education. During the time I was able to be online, I saw that there were about 800 other attendees, presumably from across the state. The Governor mentioned that there were over 1,300 registrants in all. […]

The virtual events we held last Friday for the incoming medical student Class of 2024 and their families went very well indeed by all accounts. As is my traditional role, I oversaw the Friday case wrap-up where the entire class “meets” (this year virtually) with the patient whose case history they have been learning from […]

I suspect that you, like me, have periods of concern and worry regarding the current pandemic and especially how it might impact the future. I was, quite frankly, struggling a bit emotionally earlier in the week, especially after yet again having to interact over the weekend with our five grandkids virtually rather than in person. […]

Last year, I mentioned an annual survey of the attractiveness of various physician practice locations around the U.S. conducted and reported by Medscape, a commercial online portal for physicians and other health professionals. The survey for 2020 was just released (“2020 Best and Worst Places to Practice”). It ranks all of the states in the […]

The growth of virtual rather than face-to-face communications and interactions occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic continues at a dizzying pace. Recently I was talking with the developer of a software product that is able to analyze millions of patient records and use artificial intelligence to develop improved patient management strategies. He recounted a recent event […]

This past Wednesday night, I had a chance to watch a virtual national celebration produced by the American Medical Association to honor the roughly 30,000 medical students nationwide who have or will be graduating this spring. Actors who have portrayed doctors on TV and in movies, along with other notable physicians and celebrities, joined the […]

As I mentioned in last week’s column, this weekend marks graduation for our senior class of medical and health sciences students. All together, more than 320 UND School of Medicine & Health Sciences students will receive their degrees in virtual Commencement ceremonies that get underway at 10 a.m. tomorrow. I have recorded on video several […]

I’m now in the last few weeks of my interim presidency at UND. Andy Armacost takes over officially on June 1, 2020, but as you probably know, we have been working together on the presidential transition since January. In view of the pandemic, having both of us working together during these trying times has been […]

As we move into May, the COVID-19 pandemic continues, although many parts of the country now seem to be on the descending limb of at least the initial infection curve. To what extent, and how severe, recurrent waves of outbreak will occur still remains unclear. But it seems likely that recurrent episodes of infection can […]

Thanks in part to geography, aggressive physical distancing and other public health measures embraced by many North Dakotans, an impressive ramp-up of the state’s testing and contact tracing capacity, and adroit leadership from the Governor and his executive branch (including the North Dakota Department of Health), North Dakota so far has been able to weather […]