Pulse Check with Dean Nelson

Six Degrees to Adoption

It turns out Kevin Bacon is only one degree away from a doctor. Well, someone who plays one on television.

In A Few Good Men, Bacon appeared alongside Noah Wyle, who went on to play physicians in both ER and The Pitt.

Many of us are familiar with the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, which illustrates how closely connected people can be. While the connections are entertaining, there is a serious point here about how information moves through networks of people.

Think about how medical students learn. At Florida Atlantic, lectures are only one part of their education. Building knowledge also happens through conversations with faculty, mentors, clinicians, and fellow students. And sometimes a single conversation can change a student鈥檚 approach.

The same principle applies to the adoption of medical innovations.

Consider robotic surgery again.听

The early experiences were met with considerable skepticism. The idea of performing surgery through robotic instruments seemed implausible to many, and some of the earliest reports reportedly had difficulty getting published.

Today, robotic surgery is routine in several specialties and increasingly useful in many others. That did not happen simply because the technology improved. Surgeons gained experience, research demonstrated where it could be useful, and others became more comfortable with the approach as they saw it being used successfully.

Rogers' diffusion of innovations theory helps explain this process. People do not necessarily adopt an innovation just because evidence exists to support it. They are influenced by who is using it, whether they trust those individuals, and whether they can see a meaningful advantage over current practice.

That is not necessarily a bad thing. Skepticism is healthy in medicine, provided we remain open to changing our views as new evidence becomes available.

We see similar behavior among patients. Someone may be reluctant to consider a new treatment until a family member or friend has a positive experience with it. That experience is not a substitute for scientific evidence, but it can influence whether someone is willing to consider the treatment in the first place.

The challenge for us is to understand how these personal connections influence the adoption of new ideas, while making sure that evidence, rather than familiarity or enthusiasm, ultimately guides practice.

A medical student may learn about a technique from a textbook, but it鈥檚 when they see it performed firsthand that they begin to fully appreciate it in practice. We also see this on the patient side, when someone asks about a new drug or treatment because they saw how it helped a family member. In both cases, personal connections can make people more comfortable with something that was once unfamiliar.

That's how diffusion works, and how new ideas catch on. Information moves through people, and each connection can influence what happens next.

In the end, you don鈥檛 have to be a doctor鈥攐r play one on TV鈥攖o be part of turning research into real-world applications.听

Sometimes, moving medicine forward begins with something as simple as sharing what we've learned.

Stay curious, MedOwls.

Wax On, Wax Off

There is a that I suspect most of us remember, even if we haven't seen the movie in decades.

Daniel wants to learn karate. Mr. Miyagi apparently has other plans. He tells Daniel to wax his cars, sand the floor, and paint his fence. Daniel does what he's told until, understandably, he gets fed up. He came to learn karate, and instead he seems to have become Mr. Miyagi's unpaid handyman.

Of course, that's not what's happening.

Daniel has been learning karate the entire time. The movements that seem pointless are teaching him coordination, balance, and muscle memory. Mr. Miyagi understands something Daniel does not yet understand: sometimes you have to learn how to do something before you fully understand why you're doing it.

Medicine and science have a lot of wax-on, wax-off moments.

Think about learning to take a patient history. At first, you're mostly trying to remember all the questions you're supposed to ask. With enough experience, something changes. You stop working through the checklist and start listening to the story.

The same thing happens in the laboratory. A graduate student learning a new technique may initially be focused on following the protocol exactly: measure this, add that, wait this long. After doing it enough times, the mechanics become second nature.听

More importantly, the student begins to understand why each step matters, what can go wrong, and when a result doesn't quite make sense.

That is when following a protocol or algorithm starts to become thinking like a scientist or a clinician.

It happens with clinical procedures, too. Early on, you're thinking about every individual step. Eventually, the mechanics become second nature and you can pay attention to everything else happening around you.

Some things are even harder to teach. There is no textbook that can really prepare a young physician to sit down with a patient or family and deliver terrible news. Nor can a protocol teach a young scientist what to do when months of experiments produce a result that contradicts the hypothesis. In both cases, you learn partly by watching someone who has been there before.

This is where a good teacher matters.

A good teacher doesn't simply tell you what to do. They watch you do it. They let you struggle a little, step in when needed, and point out something you didn't see. Then they let you try again.

Sometimes the lesson is technical. Sometimes it's about the patient or the experiment. And sometimes it's about you.

That's apprenticeship. It happens at the bedside, in the operating room, and at the laboratory bench. You learn the craft by working alongside someone who has already learned it鈥攁nd, eventually, by doing it without them.

We call a lot of that "experience," but I think it's more than that. Experience is doing something many times. The real value of apprenticeship is having someone help you understand what you should be noticing while you're doing it.

Over time, that becomes judgment.

And if the apprenticeship works, eventually you find yourself on the other side of the relationship, watching someone else struggle with something you've done a thousand times.

You let them struggle a little.

Then you say, "Try it this way."

Wax on.

Stay curious, MedOwls.

The Innermost Circle

At a recent medical meeting, a former resident from decades ago told me about a patient she had recently cared for. She described the clinical problem, then added, "I still remember what you taught me when I was on your rotation." I had no memory of teaching her that, though it did sound like something I would have said. What struck me was not that she remembered the lesson. It was that an encounter that felt entirely routine to me had become, for her, one of those indelible moments 鈥� the kind that quietly shapes how a person thinks and makes a hard decision, long after the moment itself is gone

That is usually how it works. The moments that matter most rarely announce themselves, and what people carry forward is almost never the exact thing you said. It is how you said it, absorbed into their judgment, that remains long after the words themselves are gone.

Author and leadership researcher Simon Sinek built a career on a related observation: why some organizations earn lasting loyalty, and others do not. In , he describes what he calls the Golden Circle. What an organization does sits on the outside. How it does that work sits inside that. Why it exists sits at the center. Most institutions can explain the outer two rings without hesitation. Few can explain the center. Sinek argues that leaders who inspire real commitment work from the inside out, because people do not commit to an institution for what it produces. They commit to the reason behind it, and that reason is what outlasts memory of the specifics.

This month gave me two chances to watch that theory play out. Our newest class arrived for their White Coat Ceremony on August 7. A room filled for White Coats-4-Care, our annual fundraising event, on August 20. It would be easy to describe both by what they produced: another entering class, another successful evening. Both are true. Neither is the reason anyone should have cared enough to show up.

The real why is older than any strategic plan. It is why a student spends four years earning a coat that, on its own, does not make anyone a physician. Their actions eventually will. It is why a donor who has never set foot in our anatomy lab provides a scholarship they will never directly see used. It is why a faculty member turns down a more comfortable position elsewhere to keep teaching here. None of those decisions make sense as transactions. Each one makes sense as a belief.

When we recruit faculty, we recruit people who already believe in that why before we describe the job. When donors gather every August, they fund a reason, not a building. When a new class puts on a coat and starts a curriculum built years before they arrived, they step into a why that predates them and will outlast their time here.

That is why the new academic year lives in the innermost circle, not in the numbers stacked around it. It is a sharper answer to the question underneath all of them.

I do not yet know which moments from this year will be the ones a student, a resident, or a colleague will carry decades from now. Most of them will look ordinary at the time. Mine did too. But the reason behind them is stronger this year than last, and stronger last year than the year before. That is what real growth looks like. Not more of what we do. A clearer sense of why we do it.

Why First

Ted Lasso's fourth season opened with Ted still in Kansas: co-parenting his son, working part-time at a grocery store, three years removed from any locker room. Rebecca, Keeley, and Higgins fly out to offer him a job that requires uprooting his entire life for a team that does not exist yet: co-head coach of a second-division women's side Richmond has not finished assembling. He says yes, and his family agrees to go with him, before there is anything to point to except the idea. Nothing about the what or the how was settled. Only the why was.

What followed was not a triumphant return. By episode three, Richmond's own shareholders are openly questioning whether a second-division women's program is worth the investment at all, the same doubt that greets almost anything unproven, voiced by the people whose job is literally to worry about outcomes. The response was not a pep talk. It was tryouts: open ones, the roster-built one, unproven player at a time, because the only way to answer doubt about whether something can work is to go build it.

Sixteen years ago, a small group of people backed a medical school with no graduates and no outcomes yet, past the same kind of doubt from people whose job was to worry about outcomes. The bet was never that the numbers already worked. It was that the reason was strong enough to make the numbers eventually follow. The Lady Greyhounds are being built the same way, one open tryout at a time, with the shareholders' doubts still on the record. Sinek would call this the only order that ever actually works: why first, then how, then what, with the record catching up whenever it catches up.

Stay curious, MedOwls.

The Long Game

The students who struggle most in medical school are rarely the ones who lack ability. They are the ones who run out of reasons to keep going. Talent earns admission. What carries you through the hardest moments of training 鈥� that is something else entirely. Angela Duckworth, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, has a name for it: grit.

In , Duckworth defines grit as the combination of sustained passion and consistent effort over time. Her research, drawn from military academies, spelling competitions, and high-performing organizations, reaches the same conclusion across every context: the best predictor of long-term achievement is not how gifted you are at the start. It is whether you keep showing up after the novelty wears off.

Talent, she found, can actually work against you. The student who excelled as an undergraduate 鈥� accustomed to being among the strongest in the room 鈥� can suddenly feel mediocre in medical school. That first experience of real struggle does not mean they do not belong. It means they have arrived at the place where grit begins to matter.

Medical education tests this in ways few other professional training paths match. Discipline carries you through the first year. Something deeper sustains you through the licensing exams, the rotation that does not go well, the patient who turns out to be sicker than initially suspected. That something is grit 鈥� and Duckworth's research is clear: it is not fixed at birth. It develops in environments that challenge and support in equal measure.

We do not build grit through inspiration alone. We build it by designing a place where perseverance is modeled 鈥� where the team stays after hours to make sure a patient gets the test they need, where the attending advocates for their patient with a recalcitrant insurance provider, where you take one more practice exam to make sure you truly understand the material. These are not soft elements of medical education. They are the infrastructure of grit.

May makes that infrastructure visible. Students who arrived here four years ago walked across the stage this month. Alumni from across graduating classes are returning for reunion. What they share, regardless of specialty or institution, is not where they started 鈥� it is how they finished. That is grit made visible.

Talent gets you admitted. Grit gets you graduated. And the passion you reconnect with 鈥� the reason you chose this work in the first place 鈥� is what keeps you practicing for decades. To the Class of 2026: what you have built here is not a transcript. It is grit 鈥� hard-won, tested, yours. That will serve you longer than anything else.

Pop Culture Reference: Shrinking, Season 3 (Apple TV+)

follows Jimmy Laird, a therapist who responded to the death of his wife by abandoning professional restraint 鈥� telling his clients exactly what he thought, regardless of protocol. Seasons 1 and 2 traced grief and forgiveness. Season 3, which wrapped this spring, is about something harder: moving forward.

Jimmy is learning what it means to keep showing up not out of desperation or guilt, but because the work still matters. His mentor Paul 鈥� played by Harrison Ford, whose own Emmy-nominated performance has been one of the series' anchors 鈥� continues practicing despite a Parkinson's diagnosis that is progressing. This season, Paul is joined by a patient played by Michael J. Fox, who has lived with Parkinson's for more than three decades and has never stopped working. The scene is not played for sentiment. It is played as one professional recognizing another 鈥� two people who chose to stay.

Duckworth would recognize all of them. Paul and Fox's character are grit in its most durable form: not the intensity of early career, but the sustained commitment of people who have built lives around work that matters and are not prepared to walk away because it has become difficult.

What Shrinking gets right is that grit is never a solo performance. Jimmy persists partly because Paul will not let him quit. Paul continues partly because his community still needs him. Medical careers last decades. The people you are training alongside right now are the reason you will be back in five and ten years.

Stay curious, MedOwls.

Before the Chart Opens

Before the chart opens, before a single lab result returns, something registers. A patient arrives, the room feels wrong, and your gut tells you he is sick. The first call 鈥� sick or not sick 鈥� shapes every decision that follows: the workup, the disposition, whether this patient goes home or stays. The assessment takes shape faster than language can follow. You act. Only later, reviewing what you did and why, do you reconstruct the reasoning behind a decision that felt more like recognition than analysis. Nobel laureate psychologist Daniel Kahneman calls this System 1: the fast, intuitive mind that runs beneath conscious thought.

In , Kahneman describes two distinct modes of thinking. System 1 operates automatically and rapidly 鈥� pattern recognition shaped by years of experience. System 2 is slow, deliberate, and effortful 鈥� the analytical mind that works through novel problems step by step. Neither system is superior. The art lies in knowing which to trust. As Kahneman observed, the confidence we feel in our intuitions is not always a reliable guide to their accuracy, which means expertise and humility must travel together.听
I find myself navigating this interplay constantly in my own work. Leadership decisions that once required careful deliberation 鈥� how to read a profit-and-loss spreadsheet, how to present a vision to a donor, how to walk into a difficult conversation 鈥� increasingly flow from accumulated context. But I have also learned to recognize the moments that demand slowing down: the sticky interpersonal situation or the decision where the stakes make speed a liability rather than an asset.

The same dynamic appears throughout our college. A senior attending physician guiding a complex clinical scenario draws on decades of System 2 analysis compressed into System 1 recognition 鈥� a form of expertise that took years to build and cannot be shortcut. Our medical students, moving through their clinical rotations, begin with methodical, checklist-driven examination that gradually integrates into something faster and more fluid. Anders Ericsson's research on deliberate practice 鈥� popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers 鈥� suggests that genuine expertise requires 10,000 hours of sustained, intentional effort before pattern recognition becomes truly reliable. Artificial intelligence adds a new dimension to this conversation. It can produce outputs that resemble expert pattern recognition 鈥� but the value of that output depends entirely on whether the person receiving it has enough System 2 foundation to evaluate what they are looking at. What AI cannot manufacture is the foundation required to evaluate its own output.

When we invest in rigorous foundational training, we are constructing the System 2 infrastructure that eventually becomes expert intuition. When we create structures for deliberate reflection 鈥� such as case conferences and morbidity and mortality rounds 鈥� we calibrate that intuition, making it more reliable over time. When we build a culture that values both quick action and careful analysis, we prepare our graduates to navigate the full spectrum of clinical complexity.

Florida Atlantic is in the business of building both 鈥� the analytical foundation and the expert intuition that grows from it. A medical school that stops teaching its students when to use System 1 and System 2 does not produce skilled clinicians. It produces dangerous ones.

Pop Culture Reference: Drops of God (Apple TV+ series)

鈥� a Japanese manga series with an acclaimed live-action adaptation on Apple TV+ 鈥� follows the world of elite wine competition, where a single sip can separate a lifetime of deliberate practice from raw, unschooled intuition.

At the center of the story is a competition between two very different kinds of knowing. Issei Tomine has spent years in deliberate, methodical training 鈥� learning to analyze wine systematically before he ever trusted his instincts. Color, aroma, structure, and finish. Each step is earned through repetition. Camille L茅ger arrives with almost no formal preparation, guided instead by a remarkable natural gift: she experiences wine viscerally, intuitively, before analysis ever enters the picture. To an observer, both produce extraordinary assessments. But the process underneath could not be more different.

Kahneman would recognize them immediately. Issei is System 2 that has become System 1 鈥� deliberate practice compressed, over thousands of hours, into reliable expert intuition. Camille is pure System 1, unanchored by the analytical foundation that makes intuition trustworthy under pressure. Her gift is real. But consider what unfolds when the wine is truly unfamiliar, when the stakes are highest, when instinct alone is not enough. That is the moment the training shows 鈥� or does not.

Medical education is in the business of producing Isseis. The goal is not to suppress instinct but to build the analytical foundation underneath it 鈥� so you know when to trust it, and when to question it.

Stay curious, MedOwls.

The Power of Observation

Early in my residency, I learned what it means to truly see a patient. A young girl, maybe seven years old, came in with her family for what they described as sleepiness and a fever 鈥� unremarkable on the surface. After I presented the case, my attending walked over, looked at her legs, and pointed to something I had almost missed: tiny red spots that did not blanch when he pressed on them. He did not lecture. He just asked what I thought they were. I have never failed to consider meningococcemia since. She got antibiotics and did well. What stayed with me was not the diagnosis 鈥� it was watching someone who knew how to see.

Albert Bandura named that kind of learning. His听听establishes that human beings learn not only through direct experience but through observation, modeling, and the social environments in which learning takes place. Medical education has its own version of this principle, captured in a phrase every clinician knows: see one, do one, teach one. It is a framework built on the understanding that experiential knowledge goes deeper than knowledge transferred through reading alone.

Sir William Osler understood this more than a century ago. 鈥淗e who studies medicine without books sails an uncharted sea,鈥� he wrote in 1901, 鈥渂ut he who studies medicine without patients does not go to sea at all.鈥� Clinical rotations are where the sea begins. You do not learn to be a physician from a textbook alone. You learn by standing next to someone who has done this thousands of times 鈥� watching their judgment, their communication, their composure when the situation demands it. You learn that uncertainty is navigable because you can see someone navigate it in real time.

We saw this play out earlier this month. On Match Day, our students learned where they will continue their training 鈥� and what unfolded in that room was not simply the announcement of placements. The specialty each student matched into did not emerge from a textbook. It emerged from a rotation, a mentor, a moment when something clicked because they were present for it. Every attending who modeled clinical excellence on a rotation, every faculty member who stayed to talk through a difficult case, every resident who took the time to teach instead of just do 鈥� those moments were in that room on March 20. That is social learning at scale.

This is what we are building here: an environment where learning moves in all directions. Students learn from faculty in the classroom and at the bedside. Faculty learn from trainees who challenge them with questions they heard on a podcast 鈥� or read on social media at 2 a.m. Researchers build on questions their colleagues first raised. Each of our pillars 鈥� education, research, patient care 鈥� depends on this kind of learning to sustain itself.

The institutions that endure are the ones where observation is intentional and modeling is visible. The moment any of us assumes there is nothing left to learn from the person beside us is the moment we stop advancing.

Eleven, the central character of听, has no instruction manual. No parents, no school, no framework for what she is feeling or why the world works the way it does. What she has, when she stumbles into Hawkins, is a group of kids who let her watch.

That is how she learns everything. She watches Mike navigate a conflict and learns what loyalty looks like in practice. She watches Dustin explain something he loves and learns what curiosity without embarrassment feels like. She watches them protect each other and decides, without anyone telling her, that this is what she wants to do too. It is Bandura鈥檚 observational learning in its most basic form: behavior, judgment, and values acquired by watching others, not by being told.

The parallel to clinical training is direct. A student on their first rotation does not yet know how to read a room, catch what others overlook, or make the quiet observation that changes everything. That skill cannot be downloaded from a textbook. It is built the way Eleven built her understanding of friendship: by watching carefully, over time, in the presence of people who already know the way.

The most important things in medicine are rarely the ones you can memorize. They are the ones you have to see.

Stay curious, MedOwls.

The Courage to Speak Up

As a clinical department chair, I learned early that the most dangerous phrase is not 鈥淚 made a mistake.鈥� It is 鈥淚 did not want to speak up.鈥� Every near-miss I reviewed, every adverse event I investigated, had the same thread running through it: someone noticed something wrong but stayed silent. Not because they did not care, but because they did not feel safe. The physicians and nurses who made the biggest difference in those rooms were not always the most experienced. They were the ones who felt safe enough and empowered to say something.

Harvard Business School professor听听has spent decades studying what sets high-performing teams apart. Her research reveals a surprising answer: it is not talent, experience, or resources. It is psychological safety - the shared belief that a team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. Her work across industries, including healthcare, shows that teams with high psychological safety report errors faster, innovate more freely, and learn more effectively. The most dangerous words in any clinical setting are not 鈥淚 was wrong.鈥� They are 鈥淚 was afraid to ask.鈥�

This concept continues to shape my thinking at COM. From my earliest days here, I made a deliberate choice: ask questions openly and demonstrate that not having all the answers is not a weakness - it is a starting point. You do not build trust by pretending to be certain. You build it by making questions welcome.

I continue to see that this culture already exists here in powerful ways. I recently sat through small-group case discussions and watched faculty invite students to challenge their reasoning during case presentations. I have seen COM and engineering researchers sit down together to explore AI applications in medical education, asking, 鈥淲hat if we tried this differently?鈥� I have watched residents say, 鈥淚 am not sure,鈥� and have that uncertainty met with coaching rather than criticism. What is powerful about this is not any single example - it is the pattern. When people feel safe to speak up, small observations become meaningful improvements, each one building on the last, creating momentum that no top-down mandate could replicate. As Newton observed, we see further by standing on the shoulders of giants - and in our learning environment, we become giants by lifting each other up.

That is why our commitment to collaboration and team-based excellence matters so much right now. We have spent this past year building trust and defining shared priorities. But none of those priorities succeed if people do not feel safe enough to flag problems early, propose untested ideas, or admit when something is not working. Curiosity requires courage. In medicine, that courage comes from knowing your question will be met with engagement, not embarrassment.

As we move into 2026, what matters is not whether we achieve our goals - we will. It is whether we sustain the environment that makes achievement possible: the willingness to ask, the courage to question, the safety to fail and try again. The moment we stop welcoming honest questions is the moment we stop learning. And a medical school that stops learning has forgotten its purpose.

Lessons from Ted Lasso's Locker Room

When Ted Lasso arrives at AFC Richmond, he does something counterintuitive for a coach: he tells his team they are allowed to fail. Not just allowed 鈥� expected to. He hangs a "BELIEVE" sign in the locker room and replaces judgment with curiosity. It seems naive. It is not.

Consider what unfolds. Nate, the quiet kit man, proposes a tactical strategy no one else considered. Roy Kent, the toughest player on the pitch, admits he is afraid of retirement. Jamie Tartt, the arrogant solo star, learns to ask for help. None of this happens overnight. It happens after Ted creates an environment where vulnerability is treated as wisdom, not weakness.

His philosophy 鈥淏e curious, not judgmental" 鈥� is not a feel-good bumper sticker. It is the foundation of teams that learn, adapt, and improve. Compare that to the culture Rupert creates, where fear drives defensiveness, mistakes get buried, and innovation dies quietly.

The parallel to academic medicine is direct. When students feel safe saying "I do not understand," when residents question an order without hesitation, when faculty propose something untested 鈥� that is when real learning happens. In medicine, that learning might be the difference between catching an error and missing one.

Stay curious, MedOwls.

Pulse Check: From Foundation to Framework

Early in my career, I figured out the difference between physicians who stayed effective over decades versus those who burned out early. It wasn't who had the most impressive credentials or could quote the latest studies - we all had that. The lasting physicians had what Zen Buddhists call "shoshin," or beginner's mind: approaching each patient with fresh curiosity rather than assuming you've seen it all before.

Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck validated this intuition through decades of research on what she termed "" - the belief that abilities develop through dedication and learning. Her work shows that experts who stay open to learning consistently outperform those who think they've figured it all out. The moment you believe you've learned everything is precisely when you stop growing.

This concept has guided my first year at the Schmidt College of Medicine. I arrived with experience from Rutgers and other institutions, but I knew that understanding what makes our COM unique required listening before leading. That approach wasn't uncertainty - it was strategic preparation.

My first year leading COM has shown me why this institution has built such strong foundations over the past 15 years. I've watched faculty refine their teaching based on student feedback and researchers ask questions that connect to real patient challenges. What's powerful about this isn't any single example - it is that everyone at the College stays curious. When that happens, small changes start mattering. A curriculum adjustment here, a research collaboration there, a partnership deepens over time 鈥� each one builds on the last, creating something far bigger than any individual achievement.

That's why our focus for 2026 matters so much. Earlier this month, I shared three priorities: advancing academic healthcare through educational excellence, strategic partnerships, and innovative research. But here's the thing: the what doesn't matter if we get the how wrong. These priorities succeed when approached with beginner's mind: when we learn from our health system partners, when we let real patient challenges shape our research questions, when we keep refining training based on what actually works or doesn鈥檛.

Entering year two with this foundation, what matters isn't whether we can achieve excellence in these areas - we will. It's whether we can keep the beginner's mind that makes excellence sustainable: staying humble and open to learning from our partners, our colleagues, and our patients. The moment we think we've figured it all out is the moment we start sliding backward.

Want an example of beginner's mind in action? Consider听听where characters arrive at work each day with no memory of their outside lives - a clean slate, unburdened by assumptions or preconceptions. While the show uses this as dystopian commentary, there's something powerful about the "innie" experience: approaching complex problems without the baggage of "that's how we've always done it."

Mark Scout and his team spend their days discovering patterns, asking questions, building understanding from scratch. They aren't constrained by prior failures or past politics. Every observation is new data. Every connection is genuinely curious.

The paradox? Their fresh perspective only becomes valuable when they start connecting what they are learning to build something coherent. Discovery without application is just data collection. Application without discovery is just repetition.

Same principle in academic medicine. New faculty bring fresh eyes. Experienced faculty bring institutional knowledge. Excellence happens when you maintain both - the curiosity of someone discovering the field for the first time combined with the wisdom of someone who's been working in it for years.

That tension between fresh perspective and accumulated wisdom? That's where transformation lives.

Stay curious, MedOwls.

Choosing Gratitude

In the emergency department, you learn to make decisions fast. A patient arrives with chest pain, and your brain immediately runs through possibilities: unstable angina, pulmonary embolism, anxiety attack, muscle strain. Most of the time, you rule out the dangerous causes and send the patient home reassured. But here's what I noticed over decades: we remember the one complex case we struggled with far more vividly than the ninety-nine straightforward ones we handled well.

There's actually Nobel Prize-winning research that explains this tendency.听Daniel Kahneman听补苍诲听Amos Tversky's听 听discovered that humans experience losses about twice as intensely as equivalent gains. This isn't just academic theory -听, from patient choices about treatment to how physicians present options. The pattern shows up everywhere: losing $100 hurts more than gaining $100 feels good. The grant that doesn't get funded stings more sharply than the three that do feel gratifying. It's not pessimism - it's just how our brains are wired.

Gratitude it's not just a nice sentiment for Thanksgiving. It's actually one of the most powerful tools we have for better decision-making. When we consciously practice gratitude, we create balance in how we evaluate our reality. We still see challenges clearly - maybe more clearly - but we also see our resources, capabilities, and opportunities with equal weight.

Think about what we have at the Schmidt College of Medicine: faculty innovating in the classroom, researchers pursuing ambitious questions, staff who embrace positive change, and students choosing this profession during healthcare's greatest transformation. These aren't just warm feelings 鈥� they are strategic assets that should inform every decision we make.

This month, I'm challenging all of us to use gratitude as an active decision-making tool. When facing a difficult choice, before diving into risk assessment, list what you are grateful for in the situation. What resources do you have? What support? What opportunities? Don't skip the critical analysis - just don't let it be the only analysis.

When we lead with gratitude rather than fear of loss, remarkable things happen. We make bolder curriculum decisions. We pursue aspirational research. We build meaningful partnerships. We create environments where talented people do their best work.

As we head into Thanksgiving, let's practice gratitude not just at the dinner table, but also in how we think, make decisions, and lead together

If you think your Thanksgiving travel plans are stressful, meet Neal and Del from听Their three-hour flight from New York to Chicago turns into a three-day odyssey involving every mode of transportation except, apparently, ones that actually work.

Steve Martin plays Neal, the uptight executive, while John Candy is Del, the well-meaning shower curtain ring salesman who becomes Neal's unwitting companion. What follows is spectacular: burned-out rental cars, wrong-way highway driving, and a motel scene with one bed that I'll let you discover for yourself.

The brilliance is watching Neal obsess over everything he's losing - his first-class ticket, his dignity, his peaceful family Thanksgiving - while completely missing what's right in front of him: a genuinely kind person trying to help, who happens to have nowhere to go for the holiday.

The turning point? Neal stops dwelling on his losses and recognizes what he's gained. Del is not the problem - he's the gift.

It's the perfect parable for gratitude as a choice. You can catalog what went wrong, or you can celebrate who helped make it right. Both are real. Only one leads somewhere good.

Happy Thanksgiving, MedOwls.

Lessons from Gall's Law: Simple Systems Evolve into Successful Complex Ones

In emergency medicine, the most effective interventions often seem deceptively simple. Stabilize the airway. Control the bleeding. Address the critical issue first. Behind each straightforward action lies years of refinement鈥攑rotocols tested, adjusted, and improved through countless iterations.

This reflects听: "A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked." Consider the inverse: could we have built modern airplanes without first understanding birds, kites, and the Wright Brothers' airplane? Of course not. You can't design complexity from scratch and expect it to function. Excellence in any field鈥攆rom aviation to medicine鈥攃omes from taking what already works and deliberately building upon it.

The same principle applies to medical education. The students begin with focused history-taking鈥攁sking the right questions, listening carefully, recognizing patterns. Over time, they layer on physical examination skills, diagnostic interpretation, and treatment planning. Rush the process, and the foundation crumbles.

The same applies to how academic health grows. Strong partnerships begin with clarity about shared objectives鈥攊mproving care, strengthening education, advancing community health. The sophisticated networks and integrated programs come later, built on foundations of iterative change, consistent collaboration, and mutual success.

Our college follows this pattern. We are strengthening our educational mission, expanding research where we've shown success, and deepening clinical partnerships that already deliver value. When implementing a new curriculum component, launching a research collaboration, or improving an operational process, resist the temptation to overcomplicate from the start. Begin with clarity and humility. Test your approach. Adjust. Then layer on sophistication when the foundation proves sound. Excellence is not something you start with; it is something you build.

Lessons from Wednesday Addams

October means Halloween, and what better time to channel Netflix鈥檚听? She mastered something most of us struggle with: being unapologetically herself in situations designed for conformity.

When she declares, "I'm not sure whose twisted idea it was to put hundreds of adolescents in underfunded schools run by people whose dreams were crushed years ago... but I admire the sadism," she's identified a universal truth: most systems weren't built with you specifically in mind.

Her survival strategy? Don't waste energy pretending to be someone else. If you are pursuing unconventional research, asking questions that challenge assumptions, or seeing possibilities others miss - own that perspective. It's often where the most valuable insights emerge.

Wednesday eventually learns to work with others without losing her edge. That's the real skill: collaboration without conformity.

This Halloween, embrace your inner Wednesday. Be authentic. Be deliberate. Be effective - with a smile that says you know exactly what you are doing.

The Journey from "I Know Nothing" to "I Know Enough"

As we settle into our new academic year, I've been reflecting on something that strikes at the heart of medical education: the paradox of confidence and competence. Picture this: a third-year medical student walks into the emergency department on their first clinical rotation. They've mastered anatomy, aced pharmacology, and absorbed volumes of pathophysiology. They feel ready to diagnose and treat. Yet within hours, they realize that textbook knowledge, though comprehensive, is just the starting point.

I experienced this myself during emergency medicine training in New York City. Despite graduating medical school with honors, my first night shift humbled me quickly. When asked to interpret an ECG, I confidently declared it showed ventricular fibrillation - only to learn it was electrical interference from a nearby unshielded device. This was the 1980s, and I had just hit what psychologists call the 'peak of Mount Stupid' - the听听in action, 鈥� where the less we know, the more confident we feel about our abilities.

This phenomenon defines medical education. Early students often display remarkable confidence in clinical reasoning, while experienced physicians approach complex cases with healthy skepticism. Experience doesn't make us more uncertain鈥攊t makes us aware of uncertainty, which paradoxically makes us better physicians. It's the classic challenge of not knowing what you don't know. The journey from unconscious incompetence to conscious competence is perhaps the most critical transformation in medical training.

At the Schmidt College of Medicine, we've designed our curriculum around this understanding. Our small-group, problem-based learning approach creates environments where students can test understanding, make mistakes, and learn from them safely. When I observe students working through clinical scenarios, I see them grappling with uncertainty - and that's exactly what we want.

This learning curve isn't just about individual growth - it's about creating a culture where seeking help is seen as strength, not weakness. Whether through our simulation center exercises or clinical partnerships, we are normalizing the learning process. Our faculty model lifelong learning, showing students that competence isn't a destination - it's a journey.

Our goal isn't to graduate physicians who think they know everything, but practitioners who are comfortable with uncertainty and skilled at finding answers when they need them - physicians who can reach that 鈥榩lateau of sustainability鈥� where competence and humility work together. At the Schmidt College of Medicine, we are dedicated to guiding each student through their individual learning journey, knowing that the humility they develop here will serve their patients well throughout their careers.

Fresh off its Emmy win for Outstanding Drama Series, "The Pitt" continues to resonate with audiences - and not just for its compelling storylines. When showrunner R. Scott Gemmill dedicated the award to healthcare workers, saying "Respect them, protect them, trust them," he captured something that medical educators understand deeply: the importance of supporting those navigating their learning curves.

The show's portrayal of mentorship rings particularly true. When Robby tells Jack about incoming med students and interns, Jack's sarcastic "Lucky, lucky me" captures what many mentors feel - but Robby's response reveals Emmy-worthy leadership. Instead of dwelling on the burden, he welcomes newcomers with acknowledging their potential while setting clear expectations.

The Pitt's Emmy Award-Winning Learning Curve Survival Guide:

Embrace the chaos - "This is the job that keeps on giving" reminds us medicine is unpredictable - exactly why we need strong teams.

1. Stay humble - When asked if he's found work-life balance, Robby admits, "No, not even close." Growth never stops.
2. Prepare, don't discourage - "Is it always this busy?" "No, it gets busier" sets realistic expectations while offering support

Whether you are in an Emmy-winning emergency department or a real medical school classroom, everyone is navigating their learning curve. Your job isn't having all the answers - it's asking smart questions, helping when you can, and staying curious.

As Robby says - and as the Emmy voters clearly agreed - "Let's go save some lives" and learn something along the way.

Welcome to the inaugural edition of "Pulse Check with Dean Nelson"! As we embark on this new academic journey together, I'm reminded of Newton's timeless wisdom: "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." In medicine, we are all building on the foundation laid by those who came before us鈥攆rom the pioneering physicians who shaped our profession to the faculty and mentors who guide each new generation of healers.

Setting the Stage for Excellence

The Schmidt College of Medicine stands at an incredible moment in its evolution. This fall, we welcomed our 15th class of medical students鈥攆ifteen years of commitment. That's enough time to see a kindergartner graduate high school, and we've watched our college grow from infancy to full academic maturity - truly standing on the shoulders of the visionaries who founded our institution.

We've built a strong foundation as a community-based medical school, but our vision extends far beyond where we are today. I see us transforming into a leading academic health hub 鈥� a central point where education, research, and clinical excellence converge to advance healthcare throughout our region. This means expanding beyond traditional medical education to become a driving force for innovation, discovery, and optimized patient care across South Florida.

Looking ahead, we are excited about the transformative growth of our college. With our recent seed funding from the state legislature for our new Health Sciences Training and Research Facility, we are building the infrastructure that will help bring this vision to life. We are renovating our simulation center, growing our clinical faculty, and hiring Ph.D. researchers鈥攁ll steps toward ensuring that future generations of healthcare professionals have even more impressive opportunities ahead.

As the saying goes, "A rising tide lifts all boats." At 麻豆精品视频, our strong sense of belonging defines us. Whether you are a medical student, faculty member, researcher, community partner, or healthcare professional in our region, we all share the same goals. Our success depends on how well we collaborate, support each other across disciplines, and remain focused on our shared mission of improving healthcare for everyone we serve.

Welcome to Our MedOwls

To our new faculty, staff, students, and trainees: you've joined something special. You are not just entering an academic institution, you are becoming MedOwls who value innovation, excellence, and are committed to improving healthcare outcomes.

To our regional partners, alumni, donors, and supporters: your continued partnership helps make our ambitious goals achievable. Together, we are building something that will benefit our region for generations to come.

Speaking of introductions, there is a classic line from听: "Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." While most of us won't be on a quest for retribution (thankfully!), there is something we can learn from Inigo's direct, memorable introduction.

Inigo's Guide to Professional Introduction Success:

1. Polite Greeting - "Hello" (always start professionally)
2. Name听- "My name is Inigo Montoya" (clear identification)
3. Relevant Personal Connection - "You killed my father" (why this matters)
4. Manage Expectations - "Prepare to die" (what happens next)

Now, let's apply this to healthcare settings. Instead of "Hi, I'm the medical student," try: "Hello, I'm Lewis Nelson, I'm a third-year medical student working with Dr. Caceres, and I'll be helping with your care today." Notice how this follows Inigo's formula鈥攑olite greeting, clear name, relevant connection (working with Dr. Caceres), and managed expectations (helping with care).

Imagine if Inigo had worn one of our standard name badges鈥攊t might have looked something like this:

While we don't typically list "revenge specialist" as a clinical specialty, the principle remains the same: clear identification builds trust and sets expectations.

The same principle applies whether you are meeting research collaborators, community partners, or prospective students. Your introduction sets the tone for every professional interaction. Make it count鈥� you might not be preparing for an epic adventure, but you are building meaningful relationships that advance our mission.

Remember:听a great introduction opens doors, builds trust, and shows respect for the person you are meeting. Whether you are in healthcare, education, business, or any other field, that's significant!