2022 Peacock-Plonk Award Recipients

August 24, 2022

Congratulations to the six recipients of the 2022 Peacock-Plonk Award for Outstanding Student Clinician. The award is given to recipients of the highest clerkship grade of Honors in their year three immersion curriculum clerkship rotations.

The Peacock-Plonk Award was established in 2017 in honor of James E. Peacock, MD, Professor Emeritus of Infectious Diseases, and George W. Plonk, MD, Associate Professor Emeritus of Vascular Surgery, who are widely respected for their clinical expertise, diagnostic acumen, bedside manner and humility.

Peacock and Plonk attended the meeting to honor the students.

Summative comments from their clerkships included:

  • Jonathan Dowell is a conscientious and self-motivated student who impressed his teams with his clinical reasoning and overwhelmingly positive attitude. He is already an adept reporter and interpreter of medical data and multiple evaluators described him as a valuable member of the team. Jonathan consistently demonstrated clinical skills above the level expected for his stage of training.
  • Rachel Jeffries is an engaged learner who takes strong initiative to help patients and the team. She is detail oriented and hardworking and displayed great surgical skills and did an excellent job with procedures. Multiple team members commented on Rachel’s compassion and great rapport with patients.
  • Sarah McCain is enthusiastic, hardworking, fearless and eager to learn. She had an impressive medical knowledge and innate curiosity that was endearing to her teammates. Sarah had a friendly bedside manner, was skillful at interviewing patients and thorough in her questioning.
  • Hannah Mugford is a professional, mature, organized and well prepared student. Residents and faculty that worked directly with Hannah noted that she was very engaged and had a strong desire to learn about patients and disease processes. She has a great depth of knowledge and easily creates great connections with patients.
  • Kelly Oechsel is proactive, enthusiastic and well-prepared. Faculty and residents that worked with Kelly commented that she was very involved in patient care and was always eager to learn and participate. She is an outstanding student who brought great energy to the team and was an excellent communicator.
  • Lena Sifen has good foundational knowledge of surgical anatomy and approaches. She understands concepts like surgical anticipation and how to be a good assistant. Lena is very comfortable with patients and has a great bedside manner; she’s also comfortable in an operating room setting and has an abundance of clinical knowledge.

Congratulations to the 2022 Peacock-Plonk award winners.