Kwame Akuamoah-Boateng, SCCM Fellow, poses with Clareen Wiencek and Mary Dievert
Akuamoah-Boateng, middle, was applauded by fellow faculty members for induction as an SCCM Fellow. His colleague Beth Epstein was also celebrated by the SCCM, earning the Grenvik Award for Ethics.

Clinical professor Kwame Akuamoah-Boateng (DNP `18) – a clinical instructor in the School and part of the advanced practice faculty team - was recently inducted as a Fellow of the Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM), the highest such honor in critical care, at the SCCM's annual Congress in Orlando, Fla.

Akuamoah-Boateng was also feted by the SCCM for his international work in Rwanda.

Said Akuamoah-Boateng's colleague Clareen Wiencek, director of advanced practice programs at UVA Nursing, "becoming a Fellow of the American Academy of Critical Care Medicine is a culminating event in one’s career – a great honor of which Kwame is most deserving. We are extremely fortunate to call Kwame an alumnus and faculty member."

 

"Becoming a Fellow of the American Academy of Critical Care Medicine is a culminating event in one’s career – a great honor of which Kwame is most deserving. We are extremely fortunate to call him an alumnus and faculty member."

Clareen Wiencek, director of advanced practice programs, of Kwame Akuamoah-Boateng, FCCM

Also honored at the SCCM Congress was associate professor Beth Epstein (BSN `94, PhD `07) who received the 2020 Grenvik Family Award for Ethics, a prize that recognizes an SCCM member's efforts to address significant ethical problems in critical care and promotes humanistic values.

Epstein - a UVA faculty member since 2004 - teaches ethics and pharmacology and was part of the team lauded in 2016 by the ANCC Magnet designation team for developing a moral distress intervention for nurses and physicians. She also developed and studied the impact of a high-tech decvice connecting parents with their infants and caregivers in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, a technology that has since been adopted at UVA, and beyond.

"Having known, worked with, and treasured my friendship with Beth during my 11-year tenure as dean," said nominator Dorrie K. Fontaine, dean emerita and professor, "I know of no other individual more devoted to and passionate about ethics in nursing and medicine, and someone who inspires others to take up the mantle she wears with such grace and poise."

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