VISTA Staffing Solutions | Locum Tenens

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).

Living in Emergency—Stories of Doctors Without Borders will be featured at the Miami International Film Festival on Sunday, March 8, 8:30 p.m. at the Cosford Cinema (U/M).

VISTA Staffing Solutions has had the privilege of supporting this stunning documentary throughout its development. It’s the first sanctioned, inside look at life in the field with these amazing physicians and it received a 10-minute standing ovation at its premier at the Venice International Film Festival.

Go to http://www.mdc.edu/filmfest/ByDay.aspx for Miami International Film Festival ticket and venue information or click here for more information about the film.

Living in Emergency — Stories of Doctors Without Borders will be featured at the Cinequest International Film Festival in San Jose this week and next.

There will be three screenings:
Friday, February 27, 7:00 p.m. at Camera 12 Cinemas
Sunday, March 1, 11:00 a.m. at San Jose Repertory Theatre
Monday, March 2, 12:45 p.m. at Camera 12 Cinemas

VISTA Staffing Solutions has had the privilege of supporting this stunning documentary throughout its development. It’s the first sanctioned, inside look at life in the field with these amazing physicians and it received a 10-minute standing ovation at its premier at the Venice International Film Festival.

Go to http://www.cinequest..org/event_view.php?eid=505 for Cinequest ticket and venue information or click here for more information about the film http://www.vistastaff.com/physicians/borders/locumtenens. We encourage you to attend and bring your friends.

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/.

Image courtesy of Red Floor Pictures

Living in Emergency: Stories of Doctors Without Borders will make its North American premier at the 20th Annual Palm Springs International Film Festival, January 15, 2009. VISTA has had the honor of supporting this film throughout its development.

The festival will showcase 209 films, culled from 73 countries. The roster will include 83 premieres (14 World, 49 U.S. and 20 North American), and 50 of the 67 films submitted for consideration in the Best Foreign Language Film category for the Academy Awards. The festival runs from January 8-19, 2009.

Living in Emergency: Stories of Doctors Without Borders screens as follows:

1/15/2009 4:00 pm

1/17/2009 1:00 pm

Camelot Theatres
2300 E. Baristo Road
Palm Springs, CA 92262

Here’s how festival organizers describe the film: “Trailing two new recruits and two veteran aid workers at field hospitals in Liberia and the Congo, this candid and often shocking documentary gets inside the minds of the volunteers of Doctors Without Borders – people who push their own limits to make a difference.”

Read more about the festival and the film, at http://www.psfilmfest.org/festival/film/detail.aspx?id=20671&FID=36

We’ll provide information about additional screening opportunities as the film is introduced across the US. Check back for updates!

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.

Image courtesy of Red Floor Pictures

LIVING IN EMERGENCY: TRUE STORIES FROM DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS made its premier August 29th at the Venice International Film Festival. The film received a 10-minute standing ovation and very positive press attention. VISTA Staffing Solutions has had the opportunity to support this film throughout its production. It has been an intense process—and it is very gratifying to see such a great final product.

VISTA is co-sponsoring a screening of the film Dec. 11, at 7:30 p.m. at the Leonardo Building, 243 East 400 South, in Salt Lake City, Utah. A Q&A with Utah Doctors Without Borders will follow the screening. For more information go to www.slcfilmcenter.org. We will provide details about national and international distribution as soon as possible.

The film has also been slated to be the main feature on “Humanitarian Intervention” at the International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights in Geneva in March. The concept of the festival is “One film, one subject, one debate,” which takes place before the UN Human Rights Council’s main session in Geneva. After the screening, there is a debate with the filmmaker and renowned specialists. This session will include director Mark Hopkins with Rony Brauman (MSF president 1982-1994), Gareth Evans (Former Attorney General and Foreign Minister of Australia) and Jean-Paul N’Goupande (Former Prime Minister of Central African Republic).The festival takes place before the UN Human Rights Council’s main session in Geneva and therefore has important political and humanitarian impact.

To keep track of the film’s progress, visit www.livinginemergency.com.