Heidi Bittner, MD

Katrina Gardner, MD

Heidi M. Bittner, MD, clinical assistant professor of family and community medicine at the UND School of Medicine and Health Sciences, recently was honored with the prestigious Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Faculty Award. Katrina Gardner, MD, a 2010 UND medical school graduate and Dickinson, N.D., native, received the Tow award for graduating medical students.

The Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Awards are sponsored by the New Jersey-based Arnold P. Gold Foundation. The awards recognize a physician and a graduating medical student who best demonstrate the foundation’s ideals of outstanding compassion in the delivery of care; respect for patients, their families and health care colleagues; as well as demonstrated clinical excellence.

Bittner was nominated by Gardner for the award because “she makes her patients feel at the center of her attention, and she does this with humor, humility and understanding,” said Gardner. “It is powerful medicine.”

Bittner graduated from the UND School of Medicine and Health Sciences in 1991. She is certified by the American Board of Family Medicine and has completed a fellowship in high-risk obstetrics and neonatology. She has been practicing at Altru Clinic–Lake Region in Devils Lake since 1995. In 2007, Bittner was named the North Dakota Family Physician of the Year by the North Dakota Academy of Family Physicians. She has been a key to the success of UND’s Rural Opportunities in Medical Education Program, a seven-month education experience for third-year medical students where they learn about problems commonly encountered in rural primary care.

Gardner was nominated for her award by a peer and by Stephen Tinguely, MD, associate professor and chair of the Department of Pediatrics at the UND SMHS. “Katrina exemplifies the characteristics of humanism and altruism that define the meaning of being a ‘good doctor,’” said Tinguely. “I hope and pray that this soon-to-be young doctor will someday return to North Dakota as I would be so honored to be listed as one of her colleagues.”

For her last medical school elective, Gardner worked at a missionary hospital in Cameroon. She is collecting PDAs from her classmates in order to provide “point of contact” medical information resources for the resident doctors at the hospital. Gardner is an inaugural member of the Gold Humanism Honor Society at the UND SMHS; she is a former two-year Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal; she also volunteered during a college summer in Quito, Ecuador; and she was named by her class as recipient of the Group Leadership and Professionalism Award. Katrina is entering a Family Medicine–Rural Track residency program at Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane, Washington.

The Gold Foundation sponsors the annual Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Awards at over 85 of the nation's medical schools. The awards are made possible through a generous donation from entrepreneur and teacher Leonard Tow.