pep talk

The tropical disturbance/depression/storm that we ended up calling Erin is due to roll through Corpus early in the morning. It doesn’t sound like it will be too bad a storm, which is what we like to hear, although there’s a concern that it will pump a lot of rain into Central Texas. Given their recent flooding, that’s not welcome news.

Dean, although still a week or more away and out in the open Atlantic, is starting to make folks on the Texas coast nervous. The state emergency people are activated, and the city, UTMB and many others have begun mapping out timelines, plans and strategies to respond if a local threat materializes. Go home, rub your lucky rabbit’s foot, and take stock of your supplies and plans, just in case.

If you don’t already do it, you should check our UTMB Alert web site.     

The university has a great weather service that we’ve been using for several years. They’re advising that we need to keep on eye on a weather “disturbance” in the Caribbean near Jamaica that has the potential to become something that could eventually be our first real tropical weather threat this season. Here’s what they had to say at 2 pm Friday:

Tropical Disturbance 34 is located in the central Caribbean Sea south of Jamaica. There really isn’t any center of the disturbance, it’s just an area of scattered thunderstorms today. Movement is to the west at around 8-12 mph. The disturbance is moving into a region that appears favorable for tropical storm development over the next 2-3 days. We are concerned that this disturbance will become much better organized late in the weekend as it approaches the Yucatan Peninsula. Most computer models continue to develop a low pressure center near the northeast Yucatan Peninsula by Sunday evening. Development is not a certainty, but we think that there is at least a 30 percent chance this disturbance could become a tropical storm near the northern Yucatan Peninsula by Monday. If it were to develop, then the initial track would be to the west to west-northwest toward northern Mexico. However, we’re seeing a recent trend in the models to weaken the high pressure center over the northwest Gulf by next Tuesday-Wednesday. This could allow any developing storm in the southern Gulf of Mexico to take a northwesterly turn, possibly toward the Texas coast around next Thursday or Friday. Upper-level winds across the Gulf appear favorable for intensification should a tropical storm develop, which means we could be looking at a hurricane threatening the west to northwest Gulf Coast late next week. What we’ll be watching for over the weekend is for thunderstorms to develop and persist over the same area of the northwest Caribbean. If that happens, a low center could begin to develop and chances of tropical storm development will increase significantly.

While there are a lot of “ifs” associated with this storm, and although things have been quiet in the tropics so far, don’t let that reinforce your “hurricane threat denial.” Remember we’re just entering now what is our peak threat period. Take the time now—before there’s an actual emergency—to review your personal and work plans, to stock up on supplies, find your plywood and important papers, and all that other stuff that buys peace of mind.  

If you don’t know where to begin, here’s a great place to get information…

(Richard Dawson and the gameshow Family Feud. How many of you remember that?)

I mentioned in an earlier post that the next Impact was going to have a summary of the You Count results. If you can’t wait, the info is also posted to the You Count web site at http://intranet.utmb.edu/youcount/. There’s the article from Impact and a PDF with more that 300 pages of results. (If you are off campus you may still be able to get to this by replacing “intranet” with “www.”  

I scanned all the results pretty quickly. A few impressions: First, factoring that the survey followed what was probably the lowest point in the 10 plus years I’ve experienced at UTMB, the overall results are pretty darn good. I know how I responded—I’ll admit that I expressed my frustration and concern in a few places. But I tried  to be honest and fair, and it looks like many of you might have done the same, based on what are a lot of positive responses in important areas. If, when things were at their darkest, so many of us still saw the good, it speaks well for our future.  

Second point that jumps out: overall, faculty were not happy when You Count rolled around. Neither were the 60 or so Police Department members who responded. I imagine the faculty compensation plan, lots of changes and general unrest factored in the former, I’m not sure what the drivers were with the latter. In any case, I hope the tide is turning for those of you who felt so disenfranchised.

Third point: There’s a lot less love going down for executive leadership in this survey than we’ve seen in the past, which if you recall the strife caused by the “N” word (Navigant), the leadership changes, the uncertainty about a lot of things, it’s not a surprise. Removed a few months, it doesn’t seem like it was that bad, but that’s ’cause time heals all.  

Fourth and final point: love it or hate it, You Count! seems to work. The participation numbers are strong, which means we’re getting a good picture of ourselves, and the responses seem to confirm what many of us would have intuitively guessed they might be, at least in many areas. The trick now is to act on what we learn about ourselves, to make this an even greater and better place to work.  

Early this year, my colleagues in the School of Medicine were very excited about a commencement speaker that had agreed to come to Galveston, a fellow named Ben Carson. I read and heard he’s one of the world’s best pediatric neurosurgeons, and that he’d come to the world’s attention after performing an ”impossible” surgery a few years ago to seperate conjoined twins. All great stuff and legitimate points of pride and excitement for the SOM.

Now, a few months later, I heard him speak. Wow. If you haven’t seen it, you need to catch it online. It may be the best 36 minutes you spend watching anything this month, and it will remind you why what we do is important.        

I spent part of today pulling together notes for our annual emergency preparedness meeting (Weds.,May 23, 2-5 p.m., Clinical Sciences Auditorium). Preparedness is important and plans and procedures do change from year to year, so the annual exercise is a good way to get people thinking about the upcoming hurricane season and emergency preparation in general. But I still think the meeting may be longer and more grueling than some of the tropical storms I’ve experienced in Galveston. wink

There are two new communication capabilities being rolled out this summer that I find pretty exciting. One is an off-site backup to our email system, something we’ve not had before. If we go offline  for whatever reason, say 22 ft. of saltwater in the general vicinity of our email servers, pvaldes@utmb.edu (or whatever your address is) will still work and be accessible via a web interface. You’ll be able to get and send email from the comfort of your hotel room in Las Vegas, or wherever the evacuation fairy takes you.

The other new exciting item is something called “reverse 911.” This will give anyone with a listing in the campus directory—you, me, students, other staff, faculty, contractors—the ability to sign up to have emergency messages pushed to us at our device/location of choice. I might want a recorded message sent to my desk, to my personal cell phone or home; I might choose to have a text message sent to my phone or non-UTMB email account. Maybe I want a page or a fax. This system should support all of the above, and give users the ability to choose what they prefer.

The IEPOs and Information Services have been working hard on these new tools, and the systems should go live in the next few weeks. They’ll likely be mentioned at the meeting tomorrow, but don’t expect a lot of details yet. They’re coming.

If you find that you can’t get enough pre-hurricane season news and information, the City of Galveston is hosting its community-wide hurricane town hall meeting May 30 at the Island Community Center, 4700 Broadway, beginning at 6 p.m. Details are online…  

Smoking is an issue that often stokes strong and opposing feelings among those that do smoke, and those that don’t. The debates swirl around topics like health, personal rights and freedom, the harmful effects of second-hand smoke. The UTMB campus—including outdoor areas—has had a “no smoking” policy since 1990; the policy was given additional teeth and revamped in 2005. One of the policy’s unintended effects has been  to drive smokers to the boundaries of the campus to light up, and on the other side of one of those boundaries has been Shriners Burns Hospital.

That’s soon to end, though, as last month Shriners’ local Board of Governors voted unanimously that Shriners Galveston would become completely smoke free as of Sept. 1, 2007. That means no smoking anywhere on their hospital grounds, including areas frequented by those seeking refuge from UTMB’s policy. I can understand the decision, think it makes sense for a health institution. But for employees or patient family members who need to get away for a quick puff, this is likely to be unwelcome news.

If you smoke and you want to quit, UTMB’s “Commit to Quit” program is pretty remarkable; they’ve averaged a dramatic 30 percent overall success rate, far better than the 5 percent chance you stand on your own. If you’re interested, there’s information online.