Friday, October 29, 2021

The Importance of Teamwork: Week of October 29th, 2021

Students, Faculty, Residents, Staff, Alumni, Board Members and Friends,

Good morning from a windy and cloudy Elkins Park campus where the leaves are falling everywhere and the weather definitely feels like Fall!

MSCHE: As I noted yesterday, we successfully completed our Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE) site visit yesterday with no required follow-up issues and accolades on several of our academic and non-academic processes. This was truly a team effort which allowed us to display the best of Salus during this process! We are Salus Strong because of all of you! More about this later….

THE BATTLE AGAINST CANCER: Check out this story on how PCO/Salus alum Kailee Watson, OD ‘12, and her connections to the University played a major role in a young patient’s battle against cancer. Dr. Watson describes how the experience helped reinforce her decision to come to PCO/Salus. Read the story here.

STAFF SPOTLIGHT: Our next Staff Spotlight is on Lindsey Cardillo, HRIS administrator in our Human Resources department. Lindsey says what she loves most about her job is interacting with the different employees and departments at Salus. Read more about Lindsey here.

STUDENTS AT LEISURE: Our next Students At Leisure (SAL) story features Ariella Erin Poon ‘24OD and the special way she commemorated the White Coat ceremony, which was virtual for her class because of the pandemic. Instead of dwelling on something that was beyond anyone’s control, Ariella made the most of it. Read how here.

ULTIMATE TREAT EVENT: Don’t forget about “The Ultimate Treat Event,” sponsored by the Office of Student Affairs, from noon to 1:30 p.m. today. Stop by the lobby table outside the cafeteria to pick up some Halloween treats, play trivia and have a chance to win some prizes.

AUDIOLOGY GRAND ROUNDS: The next Audiology Grand Rounds will be today at 12:15 p.m. Jessica Heritage and Jenna Jalowiec will speak on “Hybrid Cochlear Implant Use for Hearing Loss Caused by Ototoxicity.” Click here to join the presentation.

RESIDENT CLASS OF 2022: This week’s resident story features Chandni Patel, OD ‘21, ’22 Resident, whose personal experience with how her vision change in high school influenced her to become an optometrist. Read more about Dr. Patel here.

WALK4HEARING EVENT: The Salus University chapter of the Student Academy of Audiology (SAA) recently participated in the Walk4Hearing, where it raised a total of $1,635 (tripling its original goal of $500). The proceeds will go to the Hearing Loss Association of America, an organization focused on advocating and providing educational programs for individuals with hearing loss.

THE COLLEGE TOUR CAST: Continuing to spotlight the cast of The College Tour, meet Tavii El, MSOT ‘21, a Doctor of Occupational Therapy student at Salus, who became so enmeshed in student life while on campus that it only made sense for her to talk about Student Life during The College Tour segment. Read more here.

FLU SHOTS: It’s flu season and if you have not already gotten your flu shots, please take the time to get one this weekend. We want to keep everyone healthy!

FINAL THOUGHTS: Teamwork is integral to everything we do in healthcare. Organizationally, the importance of working together as a team is no less important. It’s been my experience that working together as a team provides opportunities for people to improve relations and professionally bond with one another over specific projects they undertake, besides accomplishing tasks more efficiently and effectively. Working through our Self-study and culminating with the site visit earlier this week, certainly provided us with these opportunities.

One other important result of working as a team is that members develop a greater sense of personal and professional accountability, as they don’t want to let their other team members down. We certainly exhibited all of these attributes as we worked through the MSCHE self-study process, in an exceptional way! We learned a great deal about ourselves that can be leveraged well into our future.

Each recommendation for improvement that was identified in our Self-Study presents opportunities for us to continually improve, which, ultimately is why we do all of this.

In the end, the fact that we had a successful MSCHE site visit comes as no surprise to me. Throughout my Navy and now academic career, I've had the good fortune to have served on several great teams, and the team we have at Salus is as good, if not better, than any of them. Whether it was how we transitioned to virtual teaching and learning at the beginning of the pandemic, created virtual commencement and white coat ceremonies, developed new relationships with local, state and national politicians or successfully worked through the MSCHE re-accreditation process, we have demonstrated we can operate as an effective team - I cannot thank you all enough for that! You are rock stars and together, make us the great institution we are today.

Have a restful and safe weekend - you all deserve it! Sunday is Halloween, so if you happen to go out trick or treating, please remember to wear your face masks when out and about (especially when indoors with lots of people around), wash your hands frequently and socially distance when you can. Stay safe, continue to look out for one another and remain SALUS STRONG!

Mike

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