Appreciating the 'Small Stuff'
We live in a complex educational – clinical – investigational ecosystem. Behind the scenes, tremendous work goes on that is vital to the ongoing existence of our medical school, but this work is invisible to 99% of the WMed community. When it is done well, the important “big stuff” ends up looking like the “small stuff.”
I was reminded of this recently when we hosted a site visit by AAALAC International, the accrediting organization that promotes the humane treatment of animals in science. Suffice it to say that if we fail this review, we will cease to do animal research, which is a huge problem.
However, the process is not just hosting a few inspectors who poke around the labs looking for dust bunnies behind file cabinets. The application and attachments detailing our comprehensive animal use program, policies, and procedures are literally hundreds of pages long and need to be clearly and concisely prepared. This thankless task (aka ”big stuff”) fell to Dr. Chris Keator, our Director of Lab Animal Resources and Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences. We are indeed fortunate to have such an experienced expert.
The site visit proceeded without a hitch and the visitors identified three minor opportunities for improvement that were immediately implemented. I am not sure if I have ever seen any similar regulatory visit proceed so smoothly. My point here is that from the outside looking in, this event was no big deal (aka the “small stuff”), but in fact, it was the “big stuff” that took the coordinated effort of Dr. Keator along with a dozen other WMed stars, all working behind the scenes. Let’s all celebrate and thank everyone at WMed who, day in and day out, work their magic, doing great things quietly and exceptionally, and making this the great organization that it is.
Cheers,
Rob
Robert G. Sawyer, MD
The Hal B. Jenson, MD Dean