We were incredibly saddened to hear that Dr. Leon Haley, our dean and CEO, passed away after a tragic accident in South Florida. He was an incredible leader and a beloved son, father, friend and colleague. Dr. Haley will be sorely missed as not only the leader of our organization but also as a tremendous friend and mentor to our specialty. Learn more about him here.

This latest COVID surge has not been easy on anyone and I’m so proud of everything we’re doing as a department to address the rising tide of patients. As with the rest of Florida, our ICUs are at capacity. In order to create more ICU beds and help with ED boarding, we turned our observation area into an ICU led by critical care trained EM physicians. Everyone is doing an amazing job in extremely challenging circumstances. In particular, our interns have hit the ground running and have done a fantastic job of transitioning from medical students to resident physicians. They are an amazing, fun and hard-working class who are already making our program better.

Our department was happy to welcome back medical students on away rotations this year. We had a lot of excellent students who we hope to work with next year! We wish you all the best of luck during interview and match season. In order to help medical students learn more about the program here at UF Jax, we have continued our successful online lecture series, EM Sneak Peak, that was started last year. It’s a way to get to know the residents, ask questions about the program, and learn about awesome EM topics including beach medicine, sports medicine, women in EM, EM critical care and POCUS.

Our residents recently attended a conference day at Jacksonville Beach with our beach/surf medicine expert, Dr. Andrew Schmidt. We learned about drowning, diving emergencies, marine envenomations, and had the chance to practice hands-on scenarios, including in-water rescue training with the lifeguards. Our residents also participated in the yearly Difficult Airway Course, which allowed us to reinforce our airway management skills. We are lucky to have some of our faculty as directors for this nationally-recognized program!

Our department had many achievements over this past quarter. First, we’d like to congratulate Dr. Joy Turner, PGY 2, who won the resident Haiku competition at the Clinical Decision Making in Emergency Medicine conference. We’ve also had many faculty achievements, including Dr. Kelly Gray being appointed to Governor DeSantis’ Commission on Mental Health and Substance Abuse. In our research department, Dr. Lauren Black received the prestigious NIH K23 award on her first submission! In addition, Dr. Faheem Guirgis was appointed to co-director of the UF KL2 CTSI Program. We’re proud of everything we have accomplished so far this year and look forward to seeing what the rest of this year has in store for us! ■