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BY DAVID SWANSON
JOURNAL-DEMOCRAT
For the past 32 years, Vicki Hamm, Cook native, has been the point person to thousands of residents who make the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) their home during specialty training stretches lasting one to eight years.
Hamm is the daughter of Delmer and Juanita Seeba, Syracuse. She has several relatives that still live in Cook. Donald and Phyllis Seeba, Glen and Izma Seeba, and Louis and Grace Bentzinger, all uncles and aunts, and cousins, Dennis and Carla Seeba. Hamm graduated in 1972 from Nemaha Valley High School, which has since merged with Tecumseh to form Johnson County Central High School.
As administrator of the Graduate Medical Education (GME) Program in UNMC’s College of Medicine, Hamm advises each resident on a range of issues from program requirements, payroll and licensing, work hours and orientation to UNMC.
“It’s important that they have a point person. The GME office is like the HR department for residents.” said Hamm, who now lives in Bellevue.
For her commitment, knowledge and oversight of UNMC’s Graduate Medical Education, Hamm received the Chancellor’s Gold U Award for April.
“I was honored and humbled to be selected. I’ve said it a million times, ‘If I’ve been successful, it’s because I’ve surrounded myself with people a lot smarter than myself’,” Hamm said.
Hamm is a resource to UNMC’s 450 residents or house officers, 40 residency coordinators and 40 program directors. The GME office has institutional oversight to make sure all residency requirements and accreditation standards are fulfilled.
“Vicki provides exceptional service and assistance to the house officers and to the departmental residency coordinators and program directors who work with her. She makes everyone feel that she cares about their problems and will do her best to solve them. She always gives the extra time and effort it takes to do things right,” said Dr. Robert Wigton, associate dean for GME.
Hamm joined UNMC in 1975 after graduating from Lincoln School of Commerce.
“I was fascinated with the health care industry,” said Hamm, the daughter of a nurse’s aid at Johnson County Hospital in Tecumseh, where UNMC’s Dr. Mike Sorrell, Syracuse native, first practiced general medicine.
“Dr. Sorrell took my tonsils out and was our family doctor,” she said.
Hamm’s tenure with UNMC almost ended after the first year. She already had accepted a job with an insurance company when she received an 11th hour offer from Wigton, the new associate dean for GME.
“This was an opportunity to work in the dean’s office so I decided to take it and have never regretted the decision. At the time, I essentially knew that students wore short white coats and residents wore long white coats. I’m really blessed to work with Dr. Wigton. He has taught me a vast amount about graduate medical education,” Hamm said.
A penchant for details, Hamm knows the required accreditation guidelines and standards for each of UNMC’s 36 accredited residency and organizes internal, mini-site visits in preparation for that program’s ACGME site visit.
“I’ve become very familiar with each program’s requirement,” she said.
Her knowledge is so extensive that Hamm has become a national expert on GME coordination, Dr. Wigton said. She has authored a book for GME directors and administrators titled “The Graduate Medical Education Committee Handbook,” which will be released in May.
A sports enthusiast, Hamm played competitive volleyball until age 42, and then followed her daughter who played in college. Hamm, now, officiates high school metro volleyball games, does work in her backyard, which abuts Fontenelle Forest, and coordinates UNMC’s Alpha Omega Alpha activities.
Her daughter, now 27, is an environmental scientist in San Francisco. Hamm plans to visit her 25-year-old son, a mechanical engineer, this fall in Aberdeen, Scotland, where he works for an oil field service company.
Until then, the den mother to UNMC’s residents will welcome every new resident to UNMC and say goodbye to those who have finished their training.
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