Grateful for local healthcare workers

Dear Editor:

Each Thanksgiving it is important to pause and reflect on all that we have to be grateful for. Especially over the last nearly two years of COVID, we at the UW School of Medicine-Gonzaga University Health Partnership appreciate and are very thankful for the physicians and healthcare workers in Waitsburg, Dayton, Clarkston, and Pomeroy, who, despite unprecedented stress and hardship, continued to train our medical students.

We desperately need more high-quality, well-trained physicians and we simply could not do it without the healthcare providers in Chelan. The UW School of Medicine has developed an extensive network of hundreds of physicians throughout Eastern and Central Washington who train medical students, just as they were once trained by their mentors. With added layers of complexity from COVID, they persevered, understanding this is a unique opportunity for medical students to learn in a pandemic situation. 

We are grateful for each physician, nurse, physician assistant, medical assistant and healthcare professional who contribute to our students’ medical education. Because of you, we can deliver top-ranked medical education to train the next generation of excellent physicians for Waitsburg, the surrounding communities, and beyond.

Together, we are working to make our region healthier.

In gratitude,

Geoff Jones, M.D.

Assistant Clinical Dean

Eastern and Central WA

University of Washington School of Medicine