The 2017-18 school year has been very busy and exciting, and my apologies for the long time since the last Pep Talk.  When I last communicated, we were preparing for the LCME Survey team visit in October.  The team came and completed their report and in February, the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) committee indicated UCF has full accreditation through 2025-26.  Congratulations and thanks to each of you for your role in this process – all of your efforts contributed greatly to this milestone.  As if this wasn’t enough excitement, in March we received word from the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) awarding us full accreditation for four years through 2022 for our Continuing Professional Development (aka CME) program.  This means we are able to award credit for programs that we sponsor.

Last week, we awarded 116 M.D. degrees to the Class of 2018.  It was Dr. Hitt who had the vision to create the College of Medicine at UCF and sadly, this was his last commencement.  He personally awarded the 492 M.D. degrees to students in the six classes from 2013 to 2018.

Graduates are now off to their residency training. This year’s match was very successful – with all but one individual in this class matching. Fifteen percent of our students matched into pediatrics, 13 percent into internal medicine and 12 percent into emergency medicine.  Seven percent matched in both obstetrics-gynecology and general surgery, 5 percent into orthopaedics and 4 percent into both anesthesiology and dermatology.  Twenty-six percent are remaining in Florida for their residency training, with 8 percent in both California and New York.

Dr. Dale Whitaker will become UCF’s fifth president in July.   Concomitant with his appointment is the formation of a new Academic Health Sciences Center at Lake Nona which includes the Colleges of Medicine and Nursing and a newly formed College of Health Professions and Sciences.  This college includes some programs from the Colleges of Health and Public Affairs, and Education and Human Performance, including social work, physical therapy and athletic training.  Dr. German will now be the vice president for health affairs since the AHSC will involve other disciplines beside medicine. She will also continue to serve as dean of the medical school.

Groundbreaking for UCF Lake Nona Medical Center, our new hospital, is scheduled for October with the facility anticipated to be open by 2020 or early 2021.  The UCF/HCA Graduate Medical Education consortium now has 22 ACGME-accredited residency and fellowship programs with about 350 residents as of June.  There are core residency programs in anesthesiology, emergency medicine, family medicine, internal medicine, neurology, obstetrics and gynecology, psychiatry, surgery and transitional. Most of these training programs are located at two to three sites (Osceola, Ocala and Gainesville).   Fellowship programs have started in endocrinology, geriatrics and rheumatology. In addition there are two non-consortium fellowship programs sponsored by the Orlando VA in retina and radiology cross-section.  For more information on our GME programs, please visit  https://med.ucf.edu/academics/graduate-medical-program/.

For the past three years, affiliated and volunteer faculty have been promoted twice per year.  Documentation for consideration is submitted by the end of December or June to the College of Medicine’s Office for Faculty and Academic Affairs.   Candidates are reviewed by the college level non-tenure promotions committee and recommended to the dean.  Promotion is effective July 1 and January 1 based on these timelines for dossier submission/review.

Congratulations to the following faculty who were promoted January 1, 2018:

Professor:  Drs. D. Jacobs, J. Huang, J. Ladde (Orlando Health),  F. Livingston (Nemours), D. Podberesky (Nemours) and J. Thundiyil (Orlando Health);

Associate Professor:  Drs. J. Feranec (VAMC), M. Garzon (VAMC),  C. Hunter (Orlando Health), R. Karch (Nemours), B. N. Khan-Assad (Nemours), S. Kynch (Florida Hospital), M. Parikh, and J. Schaus (UCF Student Health).

Congratulations to those whose promotion will be effective July 1, 2018:  Professor:  Drs. T. Maugans (Nemours) and J. Needham (Florida Hospital); Associate Professor:  Drs. K. Abusdaada (UCF-HCA-Ocala), S. Huda Bay Pines VA), F. Jhaveri (Heart of Florida and H. Swana (Orlando Health).

The promotion documents include:  Updated curriculum vitae (CV); three professional reference letters addressed to me (one of the references should be from a module, clerkship, program or site director  at UCF COM, if applicable); and a statement summarizing evidence of activities, or achievements commensurate with promotion rank as specified in the affiliated-volunteer faculty handbook (Pages 8-9).  All promotion documents should be forwarded electronically to: Carolyn Castro-Pagan at carolyn.pagan@ucf.edu.

Over the past year we have appointed 413 affiliated and volunteer faculty.  These faculty are located at 15 of the institutions with whom we have an affiliation agreement or in private practice.

This weekend the country will be celebrating Memorial Day –a day honoring women and men who died while serving in the U.S. military.  It also is viewed as the beginning of summer and as this season approaches, I hope all of you will have the opportunity to enjoy free time with family and friends. Thank you so much for all of your efforts with the educational programs – UME and GME – in the College of Medicine.