A Great First Week: Week of August 23rd

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