On Wednesday, June 10, 2020, the Infectious Diseases Division gathered to celebrate two outstanding fellows, Drs. Lindsey Rearigh and Randy McCreery. Both are graduating and moving on to amazing next steps. This year’s graduation was unprecedented for our program (and every other training program) due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But even though these graduating fellows capped off their year with zoom lectures and conferences, and we had to celebrate their graduation in a physically distant manner, we were grateful to be able to celebrate them nonetheless.
In 2018, our ID fellowship program was expanded to 4 fellows per year and both Dr. Rearigh and Dr. McCreery welcomed the opportunity to experience the program growth in live action. As a division, we were honored to help Drs. Rearigh and McCreery grow and develop their infectious diseases knowledge, leadership and team management skills, and most importantly, to expand their skills in delivering compassionate patient care. We also enjoyed getting to know them as amazing people, share laughs with them, and celebrate milestones with them.
During her fellowship, Dr. Lindsey Rearigh received the Internal Medicine resident/fellow poster competition Top Poster presentation award (May 2020) and the Internal Medicine Department 2020 Fellow Research Award. She presented a poster at IDWeek2019, and also published two manuscripts (De-escalation of empiric broad spectrum antibiotics in hematopoietic stem cell transplant recipients with febrile neutropenia, and Uveomeningeal syndrome in a healthy, young male: an unusual presentation of West Nile virus). Two additional manuscripts are still in under review. Dr. Rearigh is moving on to private practice at the McFarland Clinic in Ames, IA.
During fellowship, Dr. Randy McCreery won the 1st Place Research Award at the 2018 Graduate Medical Education Research Symposium. He also presented an oral presentation at IDWeek2019, and published a manuscript (Oral Vancomycin Prophylaxis for Clostridioides difficile in High-Risk Patients Receiving Systemic Antibiotics: What Exactly Are We Preventing?) with three additional manuscripts in progress. Dr. McCreery will be moving back to CA where he grew up. He will be practicing at Mercy Medical Group in Sacramento, CA.
We will certainly miss them both dearly, but wish them all the best in their journeys, and hope to keep sharing their news along the way!
*Thanks to Megan Hoesing for contributing some of the content for this post
Congrats you two! Its been a pleasure…..and shenanigans of course.