Nathan Finch Receives Mulholland Award
On June 14th, 2017, Neuroradiology Fellow Nathan Finch was blown away when he received the Mulholland Award for Teaching Excellence in Foundations of Medicine.
Each year, first and second year medical students vote on a pool of nominees to “honor them for their teaching excellence in the basic medical sciences,” the official website states. This has been a long-standing tradition spanning 100 years. There are 10 award recipients.
Dr. Susan Kirk, Designated Institutional Official (DIO) for GME programs, presented the award at a Neuroradiology division meeting. Nathan’s face was priceless when she announced his name. “That’s maybe the most surprised I’ve ever seen someone,” said Dr. Kirk.
Nathan concurred. “I was shocked; it was very much unexpected,” he said. “I was not aware that the medical students evaluated us or nominated for awards, and I had been hurrying around before lunch trying to organize a biopsy before being dragged into what I estimated would be another standard fare division meeting. Then someone pulls out a plaque and starts saying all these wonderful complimentary things and I was thinking, ‘Wow, this person sounds amazing. Who is it? Spill the beans already.’ Hearing that someone had said such things about me was heartwarming and surprising.”
Several anonymous comments accompanied the award: “At Nathan’s work station there’s always an extra chair for students, there’s always a pile of printed articles for reading that night, and there’s always a greatest case yet.”
Another stated: “It’s not easy to parse out time given the extremely busy clinical service. He took it upon himself to change the way we teach at the radiology workstation.”
Dr. Sugoto Mukherjee, Director of the Neuroradiology Division, said, “One of the things I realized is that Nathan does certain things the rest of us never do. For example, he allows the med students to use the mouse, come up with their own interpretation, and sometimes even dictate.”
Nathan told us his final thought after he received the award was: “I wish I had shaved!”
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