Charlie’s journey
Charlie LaFever survived several tours overseas while in the U.S. Army, but one night when back in the United States, he suffered an injury that changed his life forever. On Oct. 6, LaFever, 31, was hit by a pickup truck and sustained a major brain injury. About 2 million Americans suffer a traumatic brain injury each year, according to the Brain Injury Association of America, which designates March as Brain Injury Awareness Month. According to the association, comprehensive treatment and rehabilitation are key in helping people recover. LaFever received care and rehabilitation at UF Health Shands Rehab Hospital, which deploys highly specialized teams of physicians, therapists, speech language pathologists, rehabilitation psychologists, case managers, dietitians and rehabilitation nurses, to treat patients. Unable to speak or walk when he arrived at the hospital, LaFever could talk, feed himself and walk with assistance prior to discharge. “It has been an honor being part of his rehab journey with seeing how motivation can really affect progress and return of function,” said physical therapist Jennifer Fogel, P.T. “He is one of those people that you remember for a long time.”
Go Gators!
For the second year in a row, the UF College of Medicine has risen three spots in U.S. News & World Report’s latest rankings of the nation’s top research medical schools. UF is ranked No. 42, up from No. 45 in 2013, according to the publication’s annual “Best Graduate Schools” rankings, which were released March 11. Among public medical schools, UF now ranks No. 17 nationally. UF also is the highest-ranked medical school in the state of Florida.
Students make the best teachers
How do you convince an entire high school student body to learn hands-only CPR? Let the students do the teaching. That was the strategy juniors Nikki Vukich and Erin Coonan came up with to motivate 850 Episcopal School of Jacksonville classmates to participate in the lifesaving training recently. The daughter of UF Health Jacksonville Chief Medical Officer David Vukich, M.D., Nikki was determined to get her school involved when she learned about UF’s initiative to train 80,000 people in what is also known as bystander CPR. Thirty-five students signed up to come to school on a Saturday to learn CPR — and how to teach it to others — with instructors from UF. Then on the schoolwide training day, those volunteers took over teaching in all of the high school’s science classes. They lectured, showed videos and slides, and then broke the classes into groups to practice on dummies.
Events made easy
Events at UF Health just received an upgrade. UF Health has teamed up with the Levin College of Law and the Warrington College of Business Administration to help make it easier for students and faculty to schedule events and use meeting rooms. This spring, all three departments will be upgrading their event management system software to the latest Dean Evans Event Management System Scheduler, or EMS. Students and faculty members will be able to automatically schedule meeting rooms, video conferences, event support personnel and other resources. The upgrade also will make it easier to publish room schedules and will make room availability accessible to all students and faculty. EMS provides event scheduling software to more than 4,000 facilities in 75 countries. They provide unique products for all types of organizations, ranging from schools to multinational corporations. For more information, call Teaching Labs Resources at 352-273-5064 or visit edtech.ufhealth.org.