For a pdf version of the faculty profile, click the appropriate link below:

Yvette Garcia-Barajas – Transitioned from the Triage Team in Clinical Enterprise to Medical Home Coordinator for General Pediatrics

Madison Thorup – Transitioned from HIM Specialist to Medical Template Specialist for Clinical Enterprise

We are very proud, and sad, to announce that Dedee Caplin will be transitioning to her new role as Clinical Director of Med Psych Programs at PCH. Dedee has been Associate Residency Program Director for the last 15 years and worked with 3 different Program Directors during that time! She helped implement many innovative changes in our program and has had an integral role within the education enterprise in those 15 years. We want to thank her for her many contributions to our educational enterprise and look forward to collaborating with her in her new role. If you have worked with Dedee re: specific residency issues, please contact Joni Hemond and Pamela Carpenter. THANKS, Dedee, and good luck!!!

Ruby Boehly is retiring this month. Ruby has been with the Division of Pediatric Critical Care for many years. Her ready smile and helpful attitude will be missed. Join us in thanking Ruby for her committed service and wishing her well in the next chapter of her life.

Dr. Nan Dudley will be holding meetings in January and February with faculty interested in promotion in the 2021-2022 academic year. Faculty should contact Nan via email to schedule a Zoom appointment. Reminder: the last day to obtain promotion approval is February 23, 2021, so be sure to set up your appointment as soon as possible.

The deadline to complete staff annual evaluations for the 2020 review period is January 31,

2021. Employees should select the Performance Management (UUPM) icon in CIS to access their own evaluation. Supervisors should select the Team Performance icon in CIS to access evaluations for their reporting staff.

As the 2020 annual evaluation is completed, the employee and supervisor should also establish goals and create the evaluation for the 2021 review period in the UUPM system. The supervisor or the employee can initiate the evaluation for the 2021 review period. Step-by-step instructions for generating an evaluation in the UUPM system are outlined in Step 1 of the Manager Instructions for Creating and Completing an Evaluation and the Employee Instructions for Creating and Completing an Evaluation.

Training material and resources for using the UUPM system are available on the Department of Pediatrics Intranet: Human Resources box | Policies and Forms | Evaluations section | UofU Staff Performance Management Tool (UUPM).

Starting in January 2021, each employee’s Bright Horizons back-up care account will reset to five days of dependent care to use through June 2021. Additionally, U of U Health will fund five extra days to each employee, meaning each employee will have a total of 10 childcare days to use between January 1 and June 30, 2021. This will replace the previous "gifting" process. For additional information, please visit the Family and Childcare Resources website.

Congratulations to our winners! They each will receive a free vacation day. Click here to see all the ugly sweater entries.

We’re excited to welcome our two FY2022 PEM fellowship matches from our University of Utah Pediatric Residency Program: Shannon Brady, MD and Hannah Moore, MD

Dr. Jose Morales Moreno (Division of General Pediatrics) was interviewed on Good Things Utah about helping children navigate the stresses of a pandemic. Watch the interview here.

Dr. Alanna Brickley (Division of General Pediatrics) discusses on Studio5/KSL the milestones parents should be keeping track of and a useful app from the CDC to help record them all. Watch the interview here.

Rebecca Purtell, MD (Inpatient Medicine) and Cheryl Yang, MD (Emergency Medicine) discuss how the achievement gap affects health disparities and workforce diversity and how we, in the healthcare community, can help close the gap. Read the article here.

We know that working well is important now more than ever. The Department of Pediatrics is encouraging its employees to participate in a new initiative to make the most of their work-from-home space and experience by turning their home office into a WELL OFFICE. Getting certified is easy! Click here for instructions.

Vaccines are being distributed as we speak. This is great news for healthcare workers, our country, and the entire global community. It is certainly a time for hope and optimism after a long 2020. While holding on to that hope and optimism, it is also important to acknowledge that challenges aren’t going away immediately either. It will likely be some time before a critical mass of the population gets vaccinated and society can start returning to normalcy. In fact, the next few months may be challenging in many of the same ways it has been over the last 9 months, if not more.

Given this reality, it is important to pace ourselves and think about ways we can foster our health to buffer against this stress and hopefully grow stronger through the experience. In her Broaden and Build Theory of Positive Emotions, Frederickson has observed that cultivating positive affect can expand our attentional scope and our thought-action repertoire (Conway et al., 2013; Fredrickson, 2001; Huppert et al., 2004). This means, in the context of positive affect, humans think more flexibly and creatively about the problems and challenges they may face. Over time, these useful consequences build long-term psychological, physical, and social resources (Conway et al., 2013).

One well evidenced, effective, and easy strategy to cultivate positive affect is called 3 Good Things (Seligman et al. 2005; Sexton and Adair 2019). 3 Good Things is intended to help individuals notice genuinely positive things around them that perhaps they hadn’t noticed previously, and to help individuals savor that experience more intentionally. Simply answer the following two questions, “What went well today and what was your role in making it happen?” In fact, a two-week 3 Good Things exercise decreased healthcare worker burnout and depression, and increased happiness and work-life balance for 12 months following the exercise (Sexton and Adair 2019). That is an incredible finding for a relatively easy intervention. As we head into the hope of a new year, remember to pace yourself through the next couple of months, and consider setting an alarm in the evening to answer the above question for a couple of weeks. Hopefully through learning and growth we can come out of 2020 stronger and more resilient than we went into it, unaware of the challenges that laid ahead.

January Book Recommendation:

Positivity

World renowned researcher Dr. Barbara Fredrickson gives you the lab-tested tools necessary to create a healthier, more vibrant, and flourishing life through a process she calls "the upward spiral."

Recognitions will be published in an upcoming issue of the newsletter. Please note: if a submitter's name is not given, we will not publish the comment. However, the submitter's name will remain anonymous in the newsletter.