Welcome to All of Our New Students

Well, we've made it through orientation week.  Again, welcome to all of our new students.  I wanted to remind you about a few of the things that I mentioned during my welcome remarks last Tuesday.  First and foremost, speaking on behalf of our great faculty and staff, we're all ABSOLUTELY THRILLED that you've chosen Salus to make your transition from an undergraduate student to becoming a healthcare professional.  We will do this together, as a team.  Our goal is to transform you into the world's best healthcare professional that not only can diagnose, treat and cure but also CARE.  

I will remind you time and time again that our care must be patient centric, placing our patient's best interest before anything else.  For most of you that won't be difficult;  after all, that's why you've chosen to become a healthcare professional.  For a few, you'll have to work at it, and that's okay - we're all here to help!  The other point I wanted to make in this blog entry is that while you all will be busier than you've ever been in the past, it will be extremely important for you to allocate your time so you ensure you both take care of yourselves but also are looking out for each other.  One of the hallmarks of a great healthcare professional is that they walk the talk.  If you're going to be taking care of others and giving advice on healthy lifestyles, you all need to do the same.  There's nothing worse than having one's healthcare provider give advice to a patient that the provider doesn't seem to follow themselves.  Get yourselves to the gym regularly, eat healthy (yeah, occasional pizza and a cheesesteak is okay every once in a while) and get as much sleep as you can.  Really, all of this advice will serve you well over the time your at Salus and beyond.  Get into good habits early so they follow you throughout your training and beyond.

Finally, have fun!  We're all in this together and we want nothing more for you than for you all to succeed - and you all will!  See you around campus!  

An Exciting Fall Semester at Salus

I hope everyone is enjoying their Summer and taking some time to recharge batteries to get ready for what I know will be an exciting and eventful Fall semester at Salus.  We're well into our Strategic Planning process having just completed a very in-depth environmental scan of our constituencies.  We learned a great deal about how the University is perceived by all.  The majority of the input we received was consistent with the information I was able to learn during my "100 Days of Listening" when I first arrived at Salus.  Given today's healthcare delivery landscape we have unparalleled opportunities to not only influence the debate on healthcare but also to revolutionize health science education at the graduate level.  As we move forward in our planning process many of you will be asked to participate in focus groups to help ensure we move Salus in the right direction.  One of my basic tenants as we develop our plan is to ensure we're pushing ourselves beyond traditional boundaries and thinking well outside the box.  I know you're up to that challenge!

Concurrently, we're also getting very close to launching a new website and branding initiative that has the potential to "change the look" of Salus from our current fonts and colors to something a little bolder and different.  Again, many of you will be asked to give us your opinions on this before any decisions are made.  As we get ready to welcome our incoming class in a couple of weeks, our marketing and branding contractors are preparing to test many of the proposed themes, logos and colors with them in addition to surveying our current students, alumni and others.

I look forward to seeing you all around campus (both Elkins Park and Oak Lane) as we open a new chapter in the book of Salus!  I hope you enjoy the remainder of your Summer.

Energize the Chain

It's been an eventful few days both for me personally and for Salus. On Friday we were honored and privileged to have Dr. Harvey Rubin from the University of Pennsylvania speak to us about his non-profit called Energize the Chain (EtC) (http://energizethechain.org ). As most of you may remember, EtC’s mission is to eradicate vaccine preventable deaths worldwide by making effective vaccines as accessible as global cell phone coverage. It's a pretty neat story that encapsulates creative thinking, entrepreneurship, public health and a sincere desire to improve the health of millions of children worldwide and a great way to kick off our Salus Time and Salus Lecture Series! What's even more exciting is Dr. Rubin's invitation for us to participate in this wonderful project. When you think about what we can bring to the project with all of our specialties, Salus participation can really enhance what is already an extremely successful international, life-changing initiative.  


I'd like for us to rethink how we currently conduct humanitarian health engagement and outreach. Currently we do it in silos. Optometry does their thing (SOSH), Audiology does their thing, etc. I would very much like us to think and execute outside our normal, comfortable models and think like an integrated health system. It's time for SOSH to evolve into SHSH (Students Health Services to Humanity). I'm challenging everyone to get on board with this so when Dr. Rubin calls me in a couple of weeks I can tell him how Salus is ready to bring all of our health science professions to the fight! Just think where this can lead. On a more personal note, I want to thank Dr. O for getting all this organized and to everyone for braving the rain and attending this very special event.

On a more personal note, I had the privilege of presenting my experiences during Operation Tomodachi (the response to the 2011 Japanese earthquake, tsunami and radio-logical emergency) to a special NATO working group addressing the effects of exposure to low level radiation earlier today in Bethesda. For those who don't know, when I was in the Navy serving as the United States Pacific Command Surgeon I was responsible for the Department of Defense's medical response to Operation Tomodachi. I explained the operational challenges we had and discussed the solutions to many of those challenges that we encountered such as developing water standards, whether or not to distribute preventative medications such as potassium iodide to our over 68,000 beneficiaries living within the area at risk or having people shelter in place. I also discussed the development of a registry that we determined was necessary from a public health perspective to continually track all those who may have been exposed to even the lowest, within normal limits, radiation levels. Today that registry has over 75,000 people enrolled.  It was a fascinating discussion that I'd be happy to share with our university community at any time.  

Introducing Salus Time

I want to direct this entry to our students and faculty. Several months ago the University's President Council (all of our VP's acting as our executive steering committee) determined, based on input from faculty and students, that there was no one time when we could realistically get the University community together to do scholarly functions, allow our student government association to do their work, or just provide a forum for the exchange of information. Out of this void, "Salus Time" was born. I will be the very first to admit that the concept as first presented was rather "squishy" but the intent was clear - setting aside time for us to communicate and come together as a University community. While organizationally, we didn't get our act together in time to meet the original start date of early this month, thanks to the efforts of many folks we now do have a start date and that is June 13th.  

It was our desire to have the first Salus Time be a very special event. In fact, it will be. The only problem is that we had to adjust the orginal time from 1-3 to 3-5 because that's when our world-class speaker was available. So, who might that be? We've been extremly lucky to secure Dr. Harvey Rubin from the University of Pennsylvania who will speak to us about his involvement in founding the non-profit called Energize the Chain (EtC) (http://energizethechain.org ). EtC’s mission is to eradicate vaccine preventable deaths worldwide by making effective vaccines as accessible as global cell phone coverage. It's a pretty neat story that encapsulates creative thinking, entrepreneurship, public health and a sincere desire to improve the health of millions of children worldwide.  

So, I realize we're asking folks to change their schedules but I promise you it will be worth it! I also promise you that we'll do much better in the future as we plan Salus Times so everyone knows what's happening.

Congratulations to Our Graduates!

I want to congratulate all of today's graduates and their families. We were extremely fortunate to have the acting U.S. Surgeon General, RADM Boris Lushniak, as our guest speaker, placing Salus on the national stage. What especially resonated with me were his comments on health and wellness and the importance of caring for our patients as a whole, not just from the perspective of our specific specialty areas. This is so very consistent with our ethos at Salus - to provide patient-centric, integrated care to all of our patients. Paraphrasing, he also reminded our graduates that today they should be starting to write a new chapter in their book of life's experiences, challenging everyone to make that book exciting, adventuresome, meaningful and interesting to read many years from now. He encouraged us to take risks, to care and in the words of FDR,

"Do something.  If it works, do more of it.  If it doesn't, do something else."

He also asked for our help in motivating people to keep moving, get regular exercise and to quit smoking. It was truly a memorable afternoon; smiling faces of our graduates and their families and pearls of wisdom from RADM Lushniak our acting U.S. Surgeon General. Thanks to all who helped to make this a very special day!

Preparing to Graduate

I've been in this wonderful position for about a year and this week I get to participate in my first multi-disciplinary commencement exercise (I had the honor to graduate our PA's last Fall). What an honor! As I reflect on this first year, without a doubt one of the most rewarding aspects of being president of Salus has been interacting with our wonderful students and faculty. So for this blog entry I want to take a few moments to thank our world-class faculty for the time and energy you all put into making Salus programs the absolute best in the world.  And to our fantastic students - as you prepare to graduate this week, thank you for your willingness to learn, explore new ideas and your intellectual honesty as you've pursued your specific degrees.

You are now ready to take your place in today's complex healthcare delivery world.  You're extremely well-prepared and have all the necessary tools to be successful clinicians, therapists and educators. You know how to cure and now, more than ever, you must always remember to care.

On behalf of all of us at Salus, we wish each and every one of you the very best of luck (you really won't need that) as you begin your new professional careers.

You are now part of the Salus DNA;  while many of us will come and go as the years pass, Salus will ALWAYS be your academic home and alma mater.  Please remember to look back every once in a while to maintain your ties to where your professional careers began. I'm looking forward to shaking your hands on commencement day!

Interprofessional Education

Having just returned from a trip to Singapore, China and Korea not only am I a bit jet-lagged but I'm also filled with many ideas on how we can capitalize on the great expertise we have at Salus to assist our Asian colleagues in advancing their professions. In Korea, for instance, there was a great deal of interest in both our optometry and occupational therapy programs. Optometry and occupational therapy is not practiced to the same level it is in the U.S. and those countries don't currently have the educational system in place to facilitate that. We have been extremely successful in bolstering optometric education in Europe, Israel, Scandinavia and Singapore by providing a master's level course in optometric practice. This has enabled these providers to practice at a much higher level than their legacy training provided them, which was often at the baccalaureate level.  We can do the same thing in Korea and potentially in China. I think these countries offer us opportunities to, once again, lead the way in increasing the scope of practice by providing a solid educational base to build upon. One other thought I'd like for all of you to ponder.  While I was overseas I thought about the interprofessional education we're providing and the interdisciplinary practice opportunities many of our students are afforded through their externships and other clinical rotations.  It may be time we start thinking about tweaking our international outreach model from one of a single profession to one that provides multidisciplinary care, thus leveraging all those great experiences our students are getting.  SOSH, for instance may evolve into SHSH - Student's Health Services to Humanity. Why not?  We work in an integrated health system so why not practice it?  Think about it. Salus students, I solicit your comments on this!  More to come......