Students, Faculty, Residents, Staff, Alumni, Board Members and Friends,
Good early morning from Elkins Park! It’s going to be a beautiful late summer day
with lower humidity and sunshine – finally! It’s also been a busy week on campus. All of our new students have been hitting the deck at full
speed getting acclimated to their new class and lab schedules while those
returning students have been quickly adapting to their new class, lab and
clinical schedules.
Whether folks have
been learning how to take patient histories, brush up on biomicroscopy skills,
understanding how a Snellen chart is put together, learning about the Krebs
Cycle, or start to learn about human anatomy and physiology, this has been a
week of exciting transition.
To all our new students, I want to again welcome you to campus and your new professions. As you
begin your professional training, we believe it’s extremely important to not
only learn about your chosen profession but also to gain familiarity with the
others here at Salus. To that end I want
to strongly encourage you all, whether you think you need it or not, to make
appointments at The Eye Institute, Pennsylvania Ear Institute and the Speech-Language Institute sometime this semester. Just by getting an exam you’ll see what these other profession do as
well as provide great patient care experiences for your colleagues. And,
who knows, you might find you need glasses, some assistance with your hearing
or some diction therapy as a result of this.
I want to take a moment to congratulate both our
Speech-Language Pathology (SLP) and Audiology programs for receiving initial 5
year accreditation and 8-year re-accreditation, respectively. Both programs received the highest level of
initial accreditation available in their categories. Congratulations to our world-class faculty
and staff who assured this was accomplished with no exceptions or follow-up
items. Truly a remarkable (but predictable)
accomplishment!
Thanks to Dr. Jim Caldwell and his staff for helping to make
last Friday’s White Coat Ceremony a huge success. I’m still hearing great comments about Dr.Cowan’s speech. Hopefully, those of you
who were there, followed his advice and penned a thank you note to those who
helped get you here.
With our Students in Optometric Service to Humanity team
home from Panama, after seeing over 1000 patients, students from our Physician
Assistant Studies (PA) program and Occupational Therapy (OT) program are in
Guatemala for a week-long mission trip with Hearts in Motion. In their first
three days, the group saw over 300 patients in three different communities.
They then traveled to the mountains to hold another clinic for indigenous
people, and yesterday, they visited a nutrition center and orphanage to help
children of Zacapa. A few days ago, the two OT students on the trip met a young
boy in a mobile clinic and later went to a central OT/PT to work with their
licensed OT mentor to build him an adaptive chair (see attached picture) to
allow him to sit with improved positioning. It’s truly amazing what all of you
are providing over there and you are making Salus proud. Thank you Viviana Di
Stefano for the updates and great pictures - I hope you all have a safe trip
home!
I’d like to thank everyone who worked to
make this
week’s University Faculty Development Day a success! It was
enlightening to hear a patient’s perspective on how effective
communication, empathy and follow-up are so integral to establishing a
meaningful and effective relationship with our own patients and clients. Yesterday’s session was truly interesting and thought-provoking. The
IRB lecture provided some very useful tips on how to start a research
project involving sensitive data as well as how our IRB team can help
get you jump-started when you decide to take on a project. The Faculty
Social was a great forum to get together to welcome new faculty and
celebrate some faculty promotion. I’m sorry I’ll miss
today’s wrap-up but I’ll be down in Washington DC speaking at the
Pentagon to
honor a former shipmate and colleague who’s retiring from his role as
the
Chairman of the Joint Staff’s senior medical advisor.
Since last year, the PA Program has collaborated with the
Philadelphia Museum of Art on a series of workshops called “The Art of
Observation”. Through the course of three sessions, the students are
lead through exercises in observation, interpretation, perspective-taking,
recognizing bias and empathy. On Monday, twelve PA students will be returning
to the Art Museum for a one-time workshop with Museum educators that will be
featured on a segment called “Growing Greater Philadelphia” produced by NBC10. When it airs we’ll get a copy out to
everyone.
Thank you to everyone who came out for this week's
Centennial Tour event in NYC. We're already gearing up for
stop #2 next week in New Jersey! Come out and join us on Tuesday in Cherry
Hill, NJ at The Farm and Fisherman Tavern from 6:00 - 8:00 p.m. Learn more or register at salus.edu/centennial-tour
As I noted earlier, it looks like the weather is going to
give us a bit of a break this weekend. While I’m out doing a long training run in preparation for the Berlin
Marathon, I hope you all do something a bit more sane and get out and enjoy
what’s remaining of summer. Be safe, use
lots of sunscreen, drink plenty of water and have fun!
See you all next week.
Mike
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