Dr. Tad Kim named Hugh A. Walters award recipient

Photo from Hugh Walters Award cermeony 2012University of Florida College of Medicine chief surgical resident Tad Kim, M.D., received the 2012 Hugh A. Walters Humanism in Medicine Award on April 4, the second time he earned this peer-bestowed honor.

The annual award honors the memory and legacy of surgical resident Hugh Walters, who died in 2008. Surgical residents at UF select one recipient each year.

In opening the special lecture event, residency director George A. Sarosi, M.D., an associate professor of surgery and the Robert H. Hux Professor, said “Hugh was one of those people who made the world around him better, just because of who he was.”

Dean Yamaguchi, M.D., the 2011 recipient, gave the guest lecture on “Science, Service and The Surgeon.” He currently is completing a vascular surgery fellowship at the University of Alabama Birmingham.

Kim, who also won the award in 2010 and is the first person to receive it twice, graduates in June and starts a cardiothoracic fellowship at the University of Mississippi. He hopes to complete a super-fellowship in minimally invasive thoracic surgery afterward.

Kim has earned numerous honors throughout his medical and surgical training, including the Society of Teaching Scholars Outstanding Resident Teacher Award, induction into Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society, and the Hugh M. Hill Outstanding Resident Educator Award, which he won in 2011 and received again this month during a May 4 College of Medicine awards ceremony.