2022 Recipients
Residency Educator Award – Program Director
This year’s Program Director Award recipient is Dr. Katie Kimbrough. Dr. Kimbrough is a critical leader in resident education in the Department of Surgery. She has served as Program Director for the General Surgery Residency since December 2018 after serving as Associate Program Director beginning in 2014.
Additionally, Dr. Kimbrough serves as the inaugural PD for the Surgical Critical Care Fellowship which she started from the ground up in 2018, bringing an important service to the state given the dearth of critical care boarded surgeons in Arkansas.
In each of these program director roles, Dr. Kimbrough is a supportive and accountable leader for faculty, staff and learners. Her contributions to graduate medical education are immense –she developed and continues to lead a Surgery Residency Leadership Council, she established and facilitates a weekly Residency Reading Club, and she has been instrumental in the Surgery On-Boarding and mentoring Program (SOAP) for junior faculty professional development.
She has won numerous teaching awards including the Red Sash Award and the Department of Surgery’s Outstanding Teaching Attending of the Year award. Her greatest contributions, though, are best reflected in the comments that were received with her nomination:
Her peers write that Dr. Kimbrough is a tireless advocate and mentor to young surgeons, giving herself freely for their benefit, selflessly rearranging her clinical, professional and personal schedule to accommodate various life events on the part of her residents. Her Chair shares that Dr. Kimbrough loves her residents. She listens to them, respects them and treats them like family often putting their wellbeing before her own. Furthermore, her nominators describe Dr. Kimbrough as the PD that every attending wishes they’d had in training and that every medical student aspires to work for. She models exactly those characteristics that we hope to cultivate in future physicians and surgeons. She is the paradigm shift from “I suffered in training so you have to as well,” to “every generation should do things better.”
Residency Educator Award- Program Coordinator
This Year’s Program Coordinator Award recipient is Ms. Darlene Clinton, program coordinator for the Orthopedic Residency Program. Ms. Clinton has served in a PC role since 2008. She is described by her nominators as having a superb knowledge of GME processes and is a meticulously organizer with coordinating skills that are “unmatched.” She has seamlessly built, adapted, and streamlined processes which make orthopedic educational activities run smoothly.
Ms. Clinton is described further as being a “reliable pillar of strength who is innovative and creative. She is a role model of professionalism dedicated to the educational success of the orthopedic residency program. Her nominators write that what they believe most strongly serves as an example of her excellence are the many ways she goes above and beyond the requirements of her role to advocate for and help the residents reach their academic and professional goals. She is the “go to” person who is kind, compassionate and always happy to help. Her orthopedic residents fondly refer to her as “Mama Darlene” and note that she is the heart of their training program. Because of humility of character, she likely does not fully realize the impact she has made during a residents educational journey.