________________________________________________________________________
Distinguished Professor Award Winner: Dr. Hugh Lee
Dr. Hugh Lee, teaching professor for the Department of Bioethics and Interdisciplinary Studies, was named recipient of the ECU's Board of Governor’s Distinguished Professor for Teaching Award in May 2020. Dr. Lee was nominated by Department Chair Dr. Maria Clay, as well as Dr. Leigh Patterson, associate dean of the Office of Faculty Development.
The extensive application for this award includes a 50-page nomination packet, both faculty and student letters of recommendation, a statement of teaching philosophy, samples of course materials and summaries of student evaluations.
Dr. Lee teaches jointly at both the Brody School of Medicine and the Department of Political Science on Main Campus. Dr. Lee serves as the primary instructor for Political Science pre- law concentration. Some of his courses include Constitutional Powers, Civil Liberties, American Judiciary and Legal Reasoning and Negotiation. At the Brody School of Medicine, Dr. Lee teaches Bioethics, Health Care Policy, Ethics and Jurisprudence, Constitutional Law, Judiciary, Administrative Law, Aging Policy and Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.
For more information from Dr. Lee regarding his appointment and award process, visit this link: Hugh Lee Teaching Award
________________________________________________________________________
Going Virtual: Pandemics Courses
March Madness took on a new meaning this year as the NCAA Basketball Tournament, like most other sporting events, restaurants, businesses and even outdoor attractions closed down as the SARS-2 COVID 19 pandemic swept across the country.
Here in Greenville, North Carolina, ECU Brody School of Medicine and many ECU Physicians clinics and Vidant floors shut down as well. For the BSOM students, this meant an end to face-to-face instruction, a shutdown of clinical rotations and certified testing center cancellations.
For BSOM faculty, staff and administration, this meant a call to action to get and keep students prepared for Step 1 and Step 2 testing, to keep them on the trajectory toward graduation and transition to residency and to address their wellness during the uncertain times.
The answer to this call to action? In very short order, three courses were created:
EDMD 9216: Foundational Sciences Review during Pandemics (M2)
“It is very difficult to maintain a self-directed study schedule over such a long and indeterminate period. The wellness reporting aspect requirements in EDMD 9216 are an incentive and reminder to be conscious of personal wellness habits.” Dr. Jim Coleman
________________________________________________________________________
EDMD 9311: Pandemic Crisis Management (M3)
“The EDMD 9311 Pandemic Crisis Management has been a tremendous interprofessional example of collaboration in creation of medical education … that has allowed students consistency and socialization in learning.” Dr. Annette Greer
“We used the COVID-19 pandemic as a way to highlight important principles in epidemiology, evidence-based medicine, physiology, microbiology, population health and ethics. This allowed us to set up a curriculum quickly with fundamentals while giving us the ability to highlight some of the new discoveries within the context of the curriculum.” Dr. Kristina Simeonsson
Special thanks to EDMD 9311: Pandemic Crisis Management Course Coordinator: Pat Harrington, administrative support and curriculum coordinator for the Department of Bioethics and Interdisciplinary Studies
________________________________________________________________________
HUMS 9422: Community Ethics, Collaboration and Policy* (M4)
*This course was also later embedded into the EDMD 9311 course
Learn more about the courses here: BSOM Pandemics Courses Interview
________________________________________________________________________
Veteran to Scholar boot camp Funded
Dr. Sheena Eagan, assistant professor in the Department of Bioethics and Interdisciplinary Studies, has received national funding for her Veteran to Scholar Boot camp! The Veteran to Scholar Boot camp is a two-week program developed to serve the active duty and veteran student population at East Carolina®. The program is a collaboration between BSOM’s Dr. Eagan and Dr. Anna Froula in the Department of English.
Originally established in 2017 by Dr. Anna Froula, the Veteran to Scholar Boot camp was developed to provide an academic environment where veterans can focus on the development of “soft skills” through discussing texts related to war or military service. Within the Boot camp, veterans will focus on 3 main objectives: community building through discussion about war experiences, academic planning and identifying opportunities to gain comfort within the classroom setting.
Eagan explains: “One persistent issue is that new student Veterans often earn lower grades in their first semester at university, largely because this population is subject to feeling isolated on campus and has come from a military culture where asking for help is often considered a sign of weakness."
"Whereas student Veterans tend to outperform traditional (18 to 22-year-old) students throughout the rest of their academic careers, that first semester can make a significant negative impact on their overall GPAs, their sense of belonging to a university, and anxiety and depression.”
The program was recently expanded to include medical humanities, and program co-director Sheena Eagan provides the expertise on military medical ethics. With funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) program “Dialogues on the Experiences of War," Eagan will focus on the social history of PTSD and the cultural inability of civilians to understand non-physical illnesses after war. Eagan notes: “Moral injury is an important inclusion, recognizing mounting evidence that suggests that moral injury may serve as an underlying mechanism for the relationship between post-traumatic stress and suicidal outcomes.”
This newly endowed program will be working jointly with the Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Science as well as the Brody School of Medicine. The scheduled debut of the Veteran to Scholar Boot camp will be August 2020. Froula and Eagan will direct this new program with full intentions to provide veterans with an non-intimidating and inclusive workspace to cultivate their strongest academic potential.
For more information on the Veteran to Scholar Bootcamp visit: Veteran to Scholar Bootcamp
For more information on National Endowment for the Humanities visit: NEH Grant
______________________________________________________________________
Ultrasound Phantoms in Simulation Medicine
Imaging phantoms or phantoms are objects used as models in ultrasound simulation training. Phantoms are useful in teaching procedures such as central lines, peripheral IVs and nerve blocks; however, commercially available phantoms can be expensive.
Luckily, Dr. Kimberly Rathbun, an assistant professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine and the director of Emergency Ultrasound, has a love for both ultrasound and crafts, so she began improving existing phantoms and creating her own vascular access phantoms for the residents to use in training.
Rathbun has collaborated with Dr. John Norbury, assistant professor in the Department of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation and PM&R clerkship director and Electrodiagnostic Laboratory director, on a few PM&R-related phantom projects.
One such project is a nerve block phantom which uses a hot dog embedded in a gelatin-metamucil mold.
To learn more about this nerve block phantom, visit: Nerve Phantom Journal Article
Credits:
Photo credits: Cover Photo, Ms. Nora Brooks: Hugh Lee Photo, Dr. Hugh Lee; Jim Coleman Phote, Dr. James Coleman; Veteran to Scholar bootcamp Poster, Dr. Sheena Eagan; Vascular Phantom Photos; Dr. Kim Rathbun, All other photos courtesy of and used with permission by ECU Photos