If you’ve read my posts over the last year or so you know how proud we are of our students’ community service work. But it’s time I took a minute to brag on my fellow employees as well!

Our Community Service Committee and HR developed a policy, now in practice, that allows staff and faculty 40 hours of paid time throughout a year to spend on community service. These hours can be divided up among the mentoring program with our partner schools or various projects arranged by the committee. DMU benefits were already terrific but this bonus is awesome. Many of our employees already do community service on their own time but some things have to happen during business hours and now we can partake in those projects. YAY!

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Contrary to what you might think what the title means, Halloween is actually one of my favorite holidays.

It’s so fun to see how creative people get with their costumes. Being a bit frugal, I decided to make an economical costume that I could re-use after Halloween. I decided that my boyfriend and I should be skunks this year and you don’t really need much for the costume.

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It’s no secret that our faculty & students are geniuses producing medical marvels and healing around the world. BUT, did you know they’re also creative & artistic?

Check out these amazing photos by Mark, a D.O. student who just wrapped up an international rotation in Mumbai, India.

Mark was the student editor of this year’s Abaton, a journal of literary, artistic and photographic expressions of the human condition. All pieces revolve around medicine, health & humanity that were submitted by DMU faculty, staff, students & alumni as well as other health care leaders.

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Starting in the 2009-10 school year, second-year PA students will have the opportunity to complete two weeks of clinical rotations outside the United States. Rotation sites have been set up in the Caribbean on the island of St. Lucia, as well as in the West African nation of Mali.

The St. Lucia site will take two students in April and another two students in November. The rotating student will have opportunities in pediatrics, family practice and other areas of medicine. The rotation in Mali will happen once each year and focus primarily on family practice. Students on this rotation will be accompanied by Laura Delaney, a DMU PA faculty member. These international rotations will be counted as part of the twelve weeks worth of elective rotations each PA student must complete during their second year. 

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Last week a group from Argentina – doctors and an inventor – met at DMU with a doc from the World Health Organization and some of our family practice faculty, local OB experts and our Global Health leaders. They were here to test an invention that may help decrease the number of childbirth fatalities. Hard to explain, the simple plastic bag uses a tiny bit of suction to safely pull a baby’s head out. If proven safe the bag would be super cheap and easy to train a lay person to use. In many countries with high infant and mother mortality, the problem is easy to fix. Usually hemorrhage or infection is the problem. But using this bag would prevent the delivery assistant from sticking unwashed hands into the mother and it would also make for a more gentle extraction, hopefully preventing hemorrhage. 

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OK, well maybe these high school students won’t be performing brain surgery anytime soon…  But, earlier this month, 22 high school students from across the Des Moines metro area were on campus to learn surgery skills from DMU students.

Members of SCACFAS (Student Chapter of the American College of Foot and Ankle Surgeons) demonstrated suturing and knot-tying skills to the members of Health Careers Exploring Post #141. DMU is proud of the SCACFAS members who volunteered their time to engage younger students and expose them to new and interesting aspects of medicine. 

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