Emergency Medicine Newsletter

Spring 2025

Dr. Jon Solberg to step down as Chair of Department of Emergency Medicine

The UND School of Medicine & Health Sciences Department of Emergency Medicine (EM) is looking to recruit its next Chair after Jon Solberg, M.D., announced plans to step down as chair.

“This is an incredibly exciting time for the next Chair to build upon what we’ve accomplished,” said Solberg, who has served as the department's chair since its founding in 2019. “Departmental highlights over the past several years include establishing a state-wide EM Journal Club, a recurring Grand Rounds program with local and internationally recognized speakers, and a case report poster contest at the State Trauma Conference, which gives students the experience of presenting a poster at a large conference without incurring the cost and time commitment required to travel out of state.”

And that’s not all.

As Solberg put it, before the SMHS invested in a full department dedicated to emergency medicine, students interested in specializing in the care of patients with acute or emergent medical conditions were mentored by faculty in the School’s Department of Family & Community Medicine.

That model meant that family medicine faculty had to work extra hard to generate graduates competitive enough for the limited number of EM residency programs across the U.S.

“We owe a debt of gratitude to our family medicine colleagues – they were the ones who mentored me and others into the field when I chose EM as a specialty nearly 20 years ago,” added Solberg, who graduated from the SMHS in 2006. “Today, the EM match has become competitive enough that having a department tailored to identify, motivate, and mentor students interested in emergency medicine is now better accomplished by EM residency-trained and board-certified physicians who specialize in this type of medicine.”

To Solberg’s point, before UND’s Department of Emergency Medicine was official, the SMHS typically matched only one or two students annually – and sometimes zero – into EM residencies, which are three-year post-graduate programs.

Since 2020, though, that number has grown to an average of more than five students matching into EM residencies each year.

“This success puts North Dakota emergency departments in a favorable position for recruiting local talent in the coming years,” said Solberg. “By July of this year, North Dakota will have 18 UND alumni enrolled in emergency medicine residency programs. These students are more likely to return to North Dakota and stay for an entire career, raising their families, participating in hospital administration and student education, and contributing to the local economy when compared to physicians raised and trained elsewhere.”

Solberg attributes this success to a core group of EM faculty who make a special effort to reach out to students earlier in their medical school training, building a relationship with them over their classroom and clinical years.

This relationship often extends into residency and beyond, Solberg said, highlighting the department’s “Wild Med Weekend,” a wilderness medicine training event which brings together faculty with expertise in high altitude mountaineering, frostbite, human endurance racing, SCUBA diving, and survival medicine.

“These faculty have put on an amazing three-day workshop four years in a row, and have trained nearly 100 students in wilderness medicine,” Solberg remarked. “The event is targeted at first- and second-year students, and it puts them in a wilderness scenario, like on the side of a mountain or responding to a medical emergency on a commercial airline flight – anywhere outside the hospital.

As Solberg explained, the emergent scenarios force students to make clinical decisions based on a patient’s history and physical exam alone, away from x-ray machines, laboratory tests, and physician consults.

“This forces them to make difficult decisions and take immediate action,” Solberg said enthusiastically. “It takes basic biomedical science – things like body temperature, pulse, tissue oxygenation, and organ perfusion – and shows students how these are not just topics in a textbook or lab. They are important physiologic parameters that play a minute by minute role in the body’s ability to stay alive.”

The Department also partnered with the UND Alumni Association & Foundation to honor one of Dr. Solberg’s most influential mentors by establishing the Dr. Mike Schlosser Memorial Emergency Medicine Scholarship.

"Our School — and the state of North Dakota — owes Dr. Solberg, our inaugural Department of Emergency Medicine chair, a huge debt of gratitude,” said Dr. Marjorie Jenkins, dean of the UND School of Medicine & Health Sciences. “He moved mountains to help train UND medical students for emergency health conditions, increasing the number of medical students choosing emergency medicine as a specialty by more than 100% in just a few years.”

And not only medical students, continued Jenkins, but Solberg's interest in interprofessional education helped prepare students in other colleges, for example UND's John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences, for a variety of emergency scenarios.

“Dr. Solberg will be missed in this role,” said Jenkins. “We look forward to working with Dr. Solberg as a trusted advisor on Emergency Medicine training."

Applications are currently being accepted for the role of Chair, Department of Emergency Medicine. Emergency Medicine faculty who are interested may submit a Letter of Interest and current CV to Linda Anderson (linda.m.anderson@UND.edu) in the SMHS Office of Education & Faculty Affairs by April 21, 2025.

North Dakota State Trauma Conference

Eleven medical student posters were submitted for the poster contest. The student poster contest winner was Trenton Bohan!

Trenton (center) with Drs. Solberg (left), Naidu, and Knutson (right)Plaque made by local woodworker and CHI St. Alexius Trauma Coordinator Howard Walth, RN.

Wilderness Medicine Elective a success!

Five med students completed the first ever elective month in wilderness medicine recently. Week one focused on dive and marine emergencies, including curriculum from the Professional Association of Dive Instructors, and practice in the swimming pool with Mandan’s Scuba One, under the direction of Randy Kraft and David Toledo. A movie night was hosted by Dive Master Kyle O’Boyle, M.D. (CHI St Alexius), and students were joined by the Burleigh County Sheriff’s Office Dive Team personnel to watch “13 Lives,” the documentary about 13 children who were trapped in a flooded cave and rescued by a scuba diving physician. Medical direction of search and rescue was taught by emergency physician Liz Roeber, M.D. (Sanford).

scuba

During week two, students focused on desert and heat-related illness, including a session with endurance athletes Kadon Hintz, M.D. (Sanford), and Experience Land’s Nick Ybarra. Students and faculty watched the documentary “Desert Runners” and discussed how to develop a medical plan for an endurance race. During week three, the focus was on mountain medicine, and a trip to Detroit Mountain, Minn., to work with UND’s Bryan Delage, M.D., to learn the ins-and-outs of being a ski patroller. Students learned how to find victims buried in an avalanche and the following morning joined undergraduate medical students to teach the skills they’ve been learning and watch a documentary on Mount Everest and high altitude physiology.

wilderness

The final phase brought students to Grand Forks to experience the school of aviation’s altitude chamber and work under the direction of Justin Reisenauer, M.D. (Sanford), a pilot and aviation medical examiner, to teach first aid and survival skills to UND aviation students.

avit

A Shift in the ER

On February 13, all students completing Phase 1 (the new name for the 1.5 years of classroom study in Grand Forks) participated in a clinical skills bootcamp, including an entire day of emergency medicine simulation hosted by the SMHS Sim Center Staff. Volunteer faculty included emergency medicine physicians Greg Bjerke (Sanford, newly retired!), Andrew Bakke (Sanford), Josh Honeyman (Essentia), Paul German (Altru), and David Collins (Ortonville, Minn.). Students treated cases like heart attacks, burns, opiate overdoses, and psychiatric cases. This has been part of our important effort to expose students to emergency medicine as early as possible in the curriculum, and we owe a great deal of thanks to the Sim Center and volunteer staff who helped to pull off the successful event.

EMS physician wanted!

We need an emergency medicine physician with experience in EMS Medical Direction (fellowship trained or not) to help expand and improve course EMRG9106 EMS and Community Medical Direction. Currently the course is offered in Bismarck only, but there has been a great deal of interest from students in Grand Forks, Fargo, and Minot, to participate. The elective utilizes online training and certificates from FEMA, and pairs students in the field with 911 dispatchers, police, fire department and EMS personnel to provide a unique introduction into the world of EMS. Most North Dakota ambulance services are currently receiving their medical direction from physicians who are not board certified in emergency medicine or EMS. This elective’s purpose is to peak the interest of future physicians to encourage them to come home and participate in rural EMS medical direction. If you are interested in helping smooth the process in any of the other major cities, please consider helping us.