OUR VALUED ALUMNI
Alumni. According to Webster’s Dictionary, the word alumni is “a plural noun referring either to a group of male graduates or to a group of both male and female graduates. The singular alumnus refers to one male graduate, alumna refers to one female graduate, and the plural alumnae refers to a group of female graduates. If you have trouble keeping track of them all, one alternative is to use alum and alums. The word graduates also presents a gender-neutral alternative.”
At Rocky Mountain University of Health Professions (RMUoHP) we have had approximately 1,700 graduates or “alums” since inception. Now in our 19th year of operation, the number of graduates each year is on the rise and almost year over year we continue to set records of graduates from the year before.
I am often asked whom I feel are the greatest beneficiaries of what we do at RMUoHP? Since one of our RMUoHP core values is student centeredness I, like many others, often consider the students to be the greatest beneficiary of our work at RMUoHP. However, all work done by the 105 employees of the University have direct connections and support to the faculty as they provide the students with the highest quality of healthcare education available anywhere in this country. When the employees are focused on their duties and responsibilities, those outcomes directly support the faculty to student connections as new knowledge is transmitted to these learners. Thus, our faculty members might be considered to be the greatest beneficiaries of the work we do at RMUoHP.
If we look out even further beyond the faculty and students to the alumni, it is clear to see that perhaps the greatest benefactors of the work done within the walls of RMUoHP are the patients that our alums are laying hands on and sharing hearts with; these patients that most employees will never see and never know, will be the recipients of the quality education the alums received while engaged in education as healthcare providers. Think of it–at any given time of any given work day–there are literally thousands of patients being touched by hands and hearts of our alums in intensive care units, orthopedic clinics, pediatric hospitals, primary care venues, women’s health clinics, on athletic fields and courts, in home health environments, in neuro-rehabilitation units, in school-based and hospital-based clinics, in private practice and many other settings throughout the world. And only those alums having that specific patient encounter will know the names of those specific patients. Those RMUoHP employees working hard on campus will never have personal encounters with those specific patients as each of them strive to deal with the challenges of their infirmities. Each of these unknown patients have their own story, their own identity, their own challenges and struggles and their own difficulties with health and well-being concerns and in many cases, the RMU alums are those whom these patients place their full trust and confidence in and are those who are their greatest hope for today and the promise of tomorrow. So, perhaps the greatest beneficiaries of all the work done by the dozens of RMU employees working each day are those unsung patients who are under the care of the RMUoHP alums.
Recently I was calculating how far reaching our alums influence is nationwide with patients they will encounter and the estimated total number of patient encounters that will occur through the hands and hearts of our alumns. Using an estimated 15 patient encounters per day by our 1,700 alums, the total patient encounters comes to 6,375,000 per year. Depending on how many years the RMUoHP alumns practice during their career, the long-term impact could be hundreds of million of patient encounters over the next couple of decades. Those numbers are staggering to consider yet demonstrate the full impact of the time spent in the classrooms and laboratories at RMU under the qualified guidance and tutoring of amazing faculty. Each student, one by one, will learn the skills necessary to ensure those patient encounters lead to restoration of health, wellbeing, and hope in their roles as RMUoHP alums. Amazing to consider!
We are very proud of our “alumni / alumna /alums” at RMUoHP; proud of the work you are each performing, the lives you are improving, the hope you are providing, the skills you each are deploying, the pain you are healing, the function you are restoring, and the infirmities you are mending with those multitudes of patients; those same patients that we on the home campus of RMUoHP will never know or meet.
Thank you for being ambassadors of RMUoHP in your roles as caregivers, healthcare providers, clinicians, researchers, academicians, and amazing representatives of this institution, in your professional circles and in your personal lives. We honor you, we are proud of you, and we are blessed by your selfless service to humanity.
At this special time of the year we wish you and yours a happy holiday season.
Richard P. Nielsen, PT, DHSC, ECS
President
