VISTA Staffing Solutions | Locum Tenens

Teach one, reach many! IVUmed, a non-profit organization committed to making quality urological care available to people worldwide, is seeking a urologist with prior international experience to provide education and mentoring for its Traveling Resident Scholarship Program in Kampala Uganda, from March 16-29, 2010.

This program sends a mentor paired with a urology resident from the United States to a host country to collaborate with local physicians.  We know from experience that locum tenens physicians make great mentors and that many of you are open to adventures that change the lives of many, including yourselves.

Here are more details about the mission:

• Physicians from the United States provide training in the techniques they use at home, while receiving training from local hosts in the techniques used in settings with limited resources. The physicians from the United States gain beneficial surgical experiences and insights into a different medical care system, while the hosts receive valuable training in techniques requiring newer technology.
• This workshop will take place at Mulago Hospital in Kampala, the capital of Uganda. The hospital is the national referral hospital for Uganda, and has approximately 1500 beds. It is affiliated with Makerere University School of Medicine. IVUmed has conducted a site visit at this location, but this will be their first workshop at Mulago Hospital.
• A typical day of work will consist of rounds, surgery, and lectures. As a volunteer, your primary responsibilities would be to provide education to the local physicians and to mentor the residents from the United States. Community urologists will present informal topics of their practical experience such as their approach to impotence, infertility, and the management of other clinical problems.
• IVUmed expects that the procedures performed will include open stone surgery, benign prostate surgery, and incontinence procedures.  Prior to the workshop, volunteers will be able to communicate with local hosts to determine the educational content of the mission, including what cases and topics the hosts would like to review.

Deadline: February 15, 2010

The deadline for this opportunity is fast approaching. I encourage you to contact Josh Wood to discuss this or a future program.

Contact Information:

Josh Wood
Director of Programs and Education
Phone: 801-524-0201
Direct Line: 801-524-0201

Each year from November 1 to January 1, VISTA sponsors a Holiday Health Drive for employees. It’s our way of helping people manage stress and avoid the nutrition and fitness landmines that so often accompany the season. More than 80 percent of employees participated. We’re especially proud of the employees who QUIT SMOKING!! Yeah!

Employees accumulate points for engaging in healthy activities like exercising, eating nutritious foods, doing volunteer work, and relaxing through meditation or massage.  Each time they earn enough points to pass a century mark (100, 200, etc.) they are entered into a drawing for prizes.

We had before-work and lunchtime group walk/runs; random, inspiring, health and wellness email messages; and a hot oatmeal breakfast for all comers to start each day.

This year we added education sessions over the lunch hour including how to maximize nutrition while cooking, the basics of aromatherapy, how to make salads for every season, how to incorporate vegetables into our desserts (honest!), holiday cooking in a green world (from a five-star resort chef) and how to make guilt-free main dishes for the holidays.

We would like to offer our sincere thanks to the local businesses and vendor partners who supported our drive this year, including:

Nostalgia—a lovely little coffee shop in Salt Lake City, www.nostalgiacoffee.com

Jiffy Lube—because what’s more stressful than having your car break down?

Nina Brown and Salad Master—who else could convince people to put beets in chocolate cake?

Leslie Smoot—who taught us healthy cooking classes from Zermatt Resort in charming Midway, Utah www.zermattresort.com

Bill Ligons—our aromatherapy champion

Irock Fitness—featuring our favorite fitness professional, Danny Blankenship—www.irockfitness.biz

It was particularly great to see participation from all of our offices and from our locum tenens, extended placement, international locums, and physician search and consulting divisions.

Our friends at IVUmed are seeking actively a practicing urologist to provide education and mentoring for their Traveling Resident Scholarship Program in Hue, Vietnam, from April 2-18, 2010.  This program sends a mentor paired with a urology resident from the United States to a host country to collaborate with local physicians. Experienced locum tenens physicians make great mentors, so we encourage you to volunteer if the opportunity fits your schedule.

Through IVUmed programs, physicians from the United States provide training in the techniques they use at home, while receiving training from their hosts in the techniques used in settings with limited resources. The physicians from the United States gain beneficial surgical experiences and insights into a different medical care system, while their hosts receive valuable training in techniques requiring newer technology.  Procedures performed include open stone surgery, benign prostate surgery, hypospadias repair, and incontinence procedures.

This workshop will take place at Hue Central Hospital in Hue, located in central Vietnam.  The hospital is the primary referral facility for central Vietnam, and serves tens of thousands of patients every year.  The majority of the patients are indigent and are treated with standard open surgery, as high tech surgery is only available for those few patients who can afford it.

A typical day of work will consist of morning rounds, surgery, with teaching conferences at mid-day. As a volunteer your primary responsibilities would be to provide education to the local physicians and to mentor the residents at the workshop from the United States.  Volunteers with academic backgrounds can present PowerPoint presentations. Community urologists will present more informal topics of their practical experience such as their approach to impotence, infertility, and the management of other clinical problems.  IVUmed will collate a list of topics prior to the program to present to the hosts for their approval.

In 1997, IVUmed in partnership with The Friendship Bridge began to send American urology residents with American mentors to the Binh Dan Surgical Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City.  With the consultation of their colleagues in Vietnam, they began moving American urology teams to smaller residency programs, and in April 2008, a combined team of staff urologists from Binh Dan Surgical Hospital and the American team worked at Hue Central Hospital.

IVUmed is also seeking a urologist for similar volunteer opportunities in Uganda in February and March of 2010.

For more information please contact:

Josh Wood
Program Manager
Phone: 801-524-0201
Direct Line: 801-524-0201

VISTA and CompHealth employees break the Utah Food Bank’s record for pounds of food gathered per employee

The last can of beans has been purchased, the donation barrels have been collected, the scales are in motion…and the winner of the VISTA/CompHealth Food Fight to End Hunger is…

We’ll get to that in just a minute. First I want to tell you what a great experience this friendly competition was for everyone involved. The Utah Food Bank picked up barrel after of barrel of food from both CompHealth and VISTA Staffing Solutions offices on the last day of June.

On Thursday, July 2, teams of employees from the locum tenens and physician staffing divisions of each company met at the Food Bank for a last round in this friendly competition. Ten employees from each company squared off in a 30-minute food sorting competition. We sorted food into boxes for state-wide distribution, under very strict rules for the final weight and labeling requirements for each box. The boxes were stacked on pallets. When the 30-minute timer sounded, staffers from the Food Bank hauled the pallets to the scales to see which team sorted the most food in 30 minutes.

They came back grinning. No one in Food Bank history had ever seen a competition so close. CompHealth employees sorted 1414 pounds of food. VISTA employees sorted 1412 pounds of food.

But our disappointment didn’t last long. Jim Pugh, Food Bank Executive Director, announced the winner of the month-long food gathering competition. (Keep in mind that this was a pounds-per-person competition.) Here are the totals:

CompHealth: 9170 pounds of food/663 employees = 13.8 pounds of food per employee

VISTA: 3462 pounds of food/189 employees = 18.3 pounds of food per employee

We lost a battle but won the war!

The best news is that together both companies gathered 12,632 pounds of food. The Utah Food Bank tells us it’s a per-person record for a company food drive—14.8 pounds per employee of the combined companies.

And if you consider that 1.28 pounds equals a meal, that’s 9869 meals—enough to feed a family of four for 822 days or 2.25 years. Wow!

The other best news is that David Baldridge president, CompHealth Locum Tenens Division, will be wearing VISTA-logoed clothing at the next annual meeting of the National Association of Locum Tenens Organizations. We’re working on your ensemble now Dave. You’re going to look great.

Our friends at IVUmed conducted another successful surgical workshop this spring in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. The workshop, which ran May 6-23, included the first ever laparoscopic nephrectomy in Mongolia. It was performed by Drs. Chris Dechet and Brian Duty, and host Dr. Dagvadorj Bayanundur.

This was the second joint pediatric and general urology IVUmed workshop at State Central Hospital #1 and the Maternal and Child Hospital in Ulaanbaatar. Like all of their workshops, this one focused on “teaching one, reaching many.” The dedicated multinational team served 85 children and adults while providing training for more than 30 Mongolian physicians and nurses. Total value of the services provided was $450,590!

The IVUmed team consisted of four urologists, one pediatric anesthesiologist, one nurse, three trip secretaries, and IVUmed’s first ever Resident Scholar, Dr. Brian Duty. Japanese anesthesiologist, Norifumi Kuratani, continued his skilled teaching and service as part of the IVUmed team at the Maternal and Child Hospital.

I know that the incredible work provided by IVUmed volunteers hits close to home for many of the locum tenens physicians who work with VISTA. To read more about this historic trip, for information about their upcoming women’s health workshop in Nigeria (August 7-21), or to read real-time blogs from the field visit www.ivumed.org . And please mark your calendar and attend IVUmed’s Annual Benefit, September 12, 2009, in Salt Lake City.

As we announced on June 1, VISTA Staffing Solutions and our worthy competitor, CompHealth, have challenged each other to a Food Fight to help end hunger in our communities. It’s CompHealth’s 663 Salt Lake City –based employees against VISTA’s 189 employees, most of whom work in Salt Lake City. Additional VISTA employees are contributing from our offices in Atlanta, Wilkes-Barre, PA, and Cary, NC. The winners will be determined by total pounds of food contributed per employee.

It’s a month-long challenge, so it seemed appropriate to do a mid-month weigh-in. Can you do a drum roll in a blog? Well here goes…

CompHealth: 603 pounds/663 employees=.9 pounds per employee

VISTA:685 pounds/189 employees=3.62 pounds per employee

Woo-hoo! That’s a total of 1288 pounds of food donated. And the Utah Food Bank tells us that 1.28 pounds of food makes up one meal, so our combined efforts have put 1006 meals on the table for hungry families.

Remember that in addition to the satisfaction of feeding hungry people, the winning team will have the satisfaction of seeing the officers of the losing company dressed in competitor’s logos at the next National Association of Locum Tenens Organizations (NALTO) conference.

CompHealth and VISTA Staffing Solutions go pound for pound to help hungry in Utah and beyond

There's nothing like hunger to get the competitive juices flowing. VISTA Staffing Solutions has challenged our competitor, CompHealth, to a Food Fight to End Hunger. We will compete through the month of June, with the winning company gathering the most pounds of food per employee on behalf of the Utah Food Bank and food banks in three additional states.

VISTA and CompHealth are fierce competitors in a fiercely human business. Our employees impact the lives of people across the globe by providing quality healthcare providers when and where they are needed. This is our chance to focus some of that energy on our own communities.

I know CompHealth management and employees feel the same way. David Baldridge, president of CompHealth Physician Staffing, put it this way: “We can’t wait to join forces with our competitors for a great cause. Our employees have big hearts and believe in giving back to the community to make it a better place.”

CompHealth will pit the 663 employees in its Salt Lake City office against VISTA's 189 employees, most of whom work in Salt Lake City. Additional VISTA employees will contribute from the company's offices in Atlanta, Wilkes-Barre, PA, and Cary, NC.

The winning team will have the satisfaction of helping the Utah Food Bank meet a 57% increase in requests for food this year, and of seeing the officers of the losing company dressed in competitor's logos at the next National Association of Locum Tenens Organizations (NALTO) conference.

Keep an eye on this blog for weekly updates on the Food Fight to End Hunger!

Utah Hunger Facts

• 1 in 10 Utahns and 1 in 8 Utah children lives in poverty. A family of four living in poverty makes just over $22,050 a year to cover health care expenses, shelter, food and other household expenses (U.S. Census Bureau: Annual Social and Economic Supplement, 2009).
• 1 in 7 Utah children under the age of 18 is at risk of hunger. 1 in 6 young Utah children under the age of 5 is at risk of hunger (Child Food Insecurity in the United States, 2005 – 2007)
• Utah is ranked 4th in the nation for the highest rate of food insecurity. More than 345,700 individuals are at risk of missing or skipping a meal due to lack of resources (US. Department of Agriculture, Household Food Security in the United States, 2007).
• Over 134,000 Utahns receive food stamps, which are not even half of those who are eligible (U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2005).
• In Utah, over 63,000 people a month eat dinner at a soup kitchen (Utahns Against Hunger, 2006).
• Nearly 300,000 Utah children receive free or reduced lunch -that’s about 40% of all school-age children (U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2004).

If more training is on your horizon, please consider applying for a Traveling Resident Scholar Opportunity with our good friends at IVUmed. I have the honor of serving on the board of this amazing non-profit organization, which provides surgical services and training to make advanced urological care available to children and women worldwide. Their motto is, “Teach One. Reach Many.”

The IVUmed Traveling Resident Scholar Program gives residents the opportunity to experience urology in a developing world setting. American residents travel with board-certified urologists to partner hospitals abroad to exchange ideas with their hosts and perform procedures such as open stone surgery, benign prostate surgery, hypospadias repair and incontinence procedures.

If you are in PGY-3 or above you are eligible to apply. Click here for details. The application deadline for travel between July 2009 and June 2010 is February 1, 2009, so please consider this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and act quickly!

I also encourage anyone interested in volunteering with IVUmed to read about recent trips and follow upcoming missions on their blog at http://www.nexuscomputerconsulting.com/clients/IVUmed/blog/.

I have the great pleasure of serving on the board of IVUmed, an organization committed to making quality urological care available to people worldwide. This amazing corps of physicians, nurses, and other assorted volunteers provides medical and surgical education to physicians and nurses, and treatment to thousands of suffering children and adults through outreach programs and surgical workshops. They also sponsor a Resident Scholar program through which they have sent more than 120 urology residents to developing countries to teach surgical techniques and learn what it takes to operate in challenging, resource-limited settings. The 2007-2008 program included residents from 11 programs who traveled to eight countries in Africa and Asia. (The deadline to apply for the next session is Feb. 1, 2009. Watch this space for more information.)

Under the direction of Catherine R. deVries, MD, founder, president, and an amazing pediatric urologist, IVUmed assembles volunteer teams of urologists, urogynecologists, pediatric urologists, anesthesiologists, pediatric anesthesiologists, nurse educators, and surgical nurses for teaching/working missions. Here are the dates of their upcoming trips:

Upcoming IVUmed Surgical Workshops:
West Bank, Palestine – January 9-18, 2009
Dakar, Senegal – February 13-22, 2009
Kumasi, Ghana – February 22-27, 2009
Dharan, Nepal – March 18-31, 2009

Upcoming Resident Scholar Trips:
India – December 19-28, 2008
Haiti – January 23-31, 2009

Volunteers have been recruited for many of these trips. However, if you are interested in possibly adding volunteer service to your locum tenens or international locums career, please contact IVUmed to join their “pool” of potential volunteers so they can match you with future needs. They particularly appreciate the flexibility, energy, and sense of adventure they find in physicians who have worked locum tenens or international locums assignments. Email info@ivumed.org, visit www.ivumed.org, or call 801-524-0201.

Here’s an excerpt from the field notes from their recent trip to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia:

IVUmed Team:
Catherine deVries, MD—pediatric urologist and team leader
Blake Hamilton, MD—urologist
Sujith Reddy, MD—IVUmed Resident Scholar
Norifumi Kuratani, MD—pediatric anesthesiologist
Janet Vogt, RN—nurse
Pamela St. Louis, RN—nurse
Edd and Ellen Thorp—trip secretaries

Mongolian Partners:
15 physicians
9 Nurses, technicians and other staff

Patients Served:
96 children and adults

Total Value of Service:
$312,935

“All of the patients are doing very well, which is great. Dr. deVries is a highly revered person. When we walk down the halls people look at her with gratitude and wonder. As one of the patients wrote on a thank you gift to her, ‘You are an angel sent down to us from heaven.’ The local surgeons were very happy to have mastered some new techniques. They were also pretty thrilled with the donations we were able to leave behind. There is a saying: ‘It’s not where you go, it’s what you do when you get there.’”
–Ellen Thorp, Trip Secretary

You can read field notes and see photos of all IVUmed trips on their blog, http://www.nexuscomputerconsulting.com/clients/ivumed/blog/ . And I encourage you to become a fan on their Facebook page so you can stay abreast of their programs and progress.