Durham Honored with Chancellor’s Award

The Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital’s own H. Edward Durham has been named a 2008 recipient of the Chancellor’s Outstanding Staff Recognition Award. There are four awards given on campus each year, one each in the categories of administration, technical /paraprofessional, office /clerical, and crafts and trades. Durham, a senior veterinary technician, won in the technical services category.

The honor comes with a cash award of $2,000 and a plaque, which he will receive at the Staff Recognition Award Ceremony on May 21.

Durham has been employed as a senior veterinary technician at the VMTH since 1997. In nominating Durham, Dr. Deborah Fine, his supervisor in the Cardiology Department, noted that he not only rises to the challenge when facing additional duties, but also thrives in an environment of increased responsibility and continues to grow in expertise and knowledge.

Durham’s many duties include teaching veterinary students, interns, and residents; performing cardiac ultrasounds; supervising the cardiac catheterization laboratory; communicating with clients; and assisting students and veterinarians with diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. He frequently leads the daily morning medicine rounds with students on the cardiology rotation, a job for which he consistently receives excellent reviews by the students. He is also a highly skilled echosonographer and is integral to training cardiology residents in that procedure. Durham routinely “scrubs-in” on cardiac catheterization procedures to assist Fine and residents in a highly complex and technically demanding procedure.

Durham’s contribution to the Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital extends beyond the Cardiology Department. In 2005, the hospital switched to an electronic medical records system, the Universal Veterinary Information System (UVIS). Durham was a member of the UVIS implementation committee. This involved many hours of effort over a year’s time while the system was set up and integrated with the previous medical records system. Since then he has served as a trainer, teaching students how to operate UVIS, and as a facilitator for other veterinary schools implementing UVIS in their own hospitals. As a member of the clinical curriculum implementation committee charged with revising the third- and fourth-year students’ clinical curriculum, his unique perspective as the only technician on the committee has been invaluable.

He is also involved in promoting the College of Veterinary Medicine. In 2006, the college produced a promotional DVD for prospective veterinary students. Durham served as the photography coordinator for the entire hospital. This involved scheduling all of the specialty areas within the small and large animal hospitals for the photography shoots, preparing locations, and maintaining the photography schedule over an intensive two-day period, all the while adjusting for the inevitable emergencies that arise in a teaching hospital. Most recently, he has served as the hospital coordinator for a PBS film crew shooting a documentary on specialty veterinary medicine.

In addition to his duties at the VMTH, Durham is committed to the advancement of veterinary technicians. He is a founding member of the Academy of Internal Medicine for Veterinary Technicians. This group has created an academy within the National Veterinary Technicians Associations for technicians working in advanced specialty areas of internal medicine. He is the director at large for cardiology technicians, and is part of the committee that is writing and preparing the initial certifying examination for technician candidates. He has also been an invited speaker at a number of national veterinary conferences, including the American Animal Hospital Association National Conference in 2007 and the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine Forum in 2006. In 2005, he was awarded the Best Technician Case Presentation Award at the Veterinary Internal Medicine Forum. Further, he has three first author publications in the Veterinary Technician Journal, and was featured on the cover of this journal in September 2006. Additionally, he has co-authored six journal articles, and 11 poster presentations.

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