Negotiations held by the WSU Office of Faculty Affairs, the Office of General Counsel, GME staff, and resident representatives in November of last year concluded in the successful establishment of a resident union, the Alliance of Resident Physicians, in the WSU School of Medicine. The Collective Bargaining Agreement is now available on the GME website.

GME is pleased to announce that it has awarded two more 2024-25 Seed Grants, to a team in the Dept. of Dermatology and a team in the Dept. of Urology. Please see our webpage for details on the program or contact GME Research Manager Dr. Heidi Kenaga.

Plans are underway for the 2025 PDS, to be held on Tuesday, April 1. The topic of the Symposium is financial management for physicians. Medical students, faculty and staff, as well as WSUSOM alumni are welcome to attend. The scheduled speaker is Geoff Potts, Associate Program Director of the Dermatology residency program. The event is free, but please register. For information, contact the Resident Council President Allene Fonseca Katz.

GME is accepting applications for the 2024-25 Peter Svider Memorial Resident Scholarship Award in memory of the scholarly achievements, clinical excellence, and exceptional collegiality of Dr. Peter Svider, a 2018 graduate of our Otolaryngology residency program. The Svider Award is given once annually to a graduating resident or fellow in any GME program in recognition of distinctive achievement in scholarly activities across the entire period of training. The deadline for applications is Monday, April 7, 2025.

GME and Henry Ford Rochester Hospital (formerly APRH) residency programs will hold the 14th Annual Quality Improvement Research Day on April 22 as a virtual event. Thirteen teams of residents in Internal Medicine, Family Medicine/Underserved Track, and Transitional Year programs will present their their research via narrated PPTs and then take questions live from a panel of judges. The keynote speaker is Robert Flora, MD, MBA, MPH, the chief academic officer at McLaren Health Care. Visit the QI Day webpage for more details or contact GME Research Manager Dr. Heidi Kenaga.

The 10th Annual SEMCME Michigan Summit on Quality Improvement, Patient Safety, and High Value Care will be held on Wednesday, May 22, 2025, together with the 47th Annual Research Forum, as a daylong event at the Somerset Inn in Troy. The top four winners of the GME/Henry Ford QI Research Day will go on to present their research at the QIPS Summit. For the Research Forum, GME can nominate up to four abstracts (one slide, three posters). The deadline for submitting an abstract is Monday, March 24. Contact GME Research Manager Dr. Heidi Kenaga for more information.

RC meetings are held every second Tuesday of the month from 6:30-7:30 pm as virtual events. Martha Jordan sends an invite to all residents in advance of each meeting. The RC President is Allene Fonseca Katz, and the RC Vice President is Candis Jarbo.  All are welcome!

The Resident Council would like to remind residents and faculty that GME hosts a page for confidential concern reporting.

Associate Program Director of Dermatology Geoff Potts has won the Recent Faculty Award from the WSUSOM Office of Development and Faculty Affairs. In December of last year, Derm faculty Meena Moossavi received the Medicine Physician of the Year Award given by the Detroit Veterans' Administration Medical Center. In addition, she was promoted from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor, effective August 2024. Congrats!!    

Internal Medicine Program Director Sarwan Kumar has published another brief article on KevinMD, "How night volunteers could transform health care during staff shortages," with Deepak Gupta. Well done! 

Several Internal Medicine residents -- Jai Kumar (first author), Ali Ahmed, and Vamsi Krishna Lavu -- collaborated with IM Program Director Sarwan Kumar on an article in the February 2025 issue of Clinics and Research in Hepatology and Gastroenterology titled "Assessing the efficacy of farnesoid X receptor agonists in the management of metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease: A systematic review and meta-analysis." Kudos! 

Marvin is a mental health resource developed specifically for medical residents. Marvin works with residents' insurance so there is minimal cost. It is also confidential and can be accessed at any time. Please see this video about the program, and here's a sign-up link.

The Employee Assistance Program is available to all residents, faculty, and staff at no cost. EAP is confidential and available to you, your partner, and your dependents. To reach an advisor, call 1-800-448-8326 or see the Life Advisor Resource Center website log-in page. Enter "Wayne State University" as the name of your employer and "Detroit" as the City of Employment.

AWARE is designed to promote wellbeing among residents and faculty. AWARE primarily focuses on individual strategies for cognitive skill-building and includes a video workshop, podcasts, and the ACGME AWARE app. These resources may be downloaded for integration into existing curricula or used with other efforts to mitigate the effects of stress and foster wellbeing.

Family Medicine Residency Program alumnus Donald Johnson (graduated in 2024) was featured on a recent WNEM-Saginaw broadcast providing viewers with advice for achieving a healthy beginning to the new year, discussing exercise, diet, and sleep. He also suggested ways of maintaining health goals across 2025, including following vaccine recommendations. 

The third annual Lawrence Lackey Jr., MD, African American History Symposium is underway. Presented by the SOM's Black Medical Association/Student National Medical Association and Black Men in White Coats, this weekly, 1-hour series of Zoom lectures focuses on facets of Black Americans in medicine. On Feb. 26, Aliya Hines, assistant professor in our Dermatology program, and Holley Gilmore will be speaking on “From Imhotep to today: The history and role of the Black surgeon in the struggle."

The Center for Health Equity and Community Knowledge in Urban Populations (CHECK-UP) promotes collaborations between WSU faculty and community organizations to advance health equity in Detroit. The Center Director is Hayley S. Thompson, PhD, a clinical psychologist whose research addresses racial and ethnic disparities in cancer care and outcomes. She is a professor in the WSU Dept. of Oncology and the Associate Center Director for Community Outreach and Engagement at Karmanos.