2021 Employee of the Year Award Winners

The Department of Medicine's Employee of the Quarter program showcases employees who have shown exemplary strides in contributing to the Department of Medicine and to the MUSC community.

At the end of the year, an Employee of the Year winner and Medicine Excellence Winner (2nd place) are selected from the pool of quarterly winners.

Congratulations to our FY21 Employee of the Year and Medicine Excellence Winners! Thank you for your outstanding contributions to the Department and for going above and beyond the call of duty on a daily basis!

FY2021 Employee of the Year

Congratulations to our Employee of the Year winner for FY21, Megan Slappe, MSN, nurse practitioner, Division of Nephrology.

She has been noted by her colleagues as an invaluable and irreplaceable member of the MUSC dialysis care team who, throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, has been the champion for our dialysis patients. She ensured that adequate precautions were set up and exhibited tremendous initiative and dependability during an acute time of crisis for the dialysis system.

She set up telemedicine rounding at our dialysis clinics and arranged sessions with our faculty to educate and help direct them on this new process. She coordinated schedules for rounding remotely on our ~600 dialysis patients so the staff, patient, and provider could work together to ensure weekly visits continued and patient care remained our priority. She also assisted with re-testing for dialysis patients so they could be removed from the COVID-only unit back to general dialysis. All of this was done while continuing her regular duties and patient care.

She is known for her strong work ethic, leadership, and compassion, and is noted as a strong advocate for her patients and staff. We are proud to have Megan as part of our team!

FY2021 Medicine Excellence Winner

Congratulations to our Medicine Excellence winner (2nd place winner) for FY21, Betsy Hopkins, PA-C, MPH, physician assistant, Division of Infectious Diseases.

A champion provider to patients, Betsy is well known for her compassionate and attentive bedside manner, her skillful care as a medical provider, and for her kindness and humor. She is recognized by her colleagues for being a true patient advocate who always puts patients first to ensure they receive the care they need. She is credited with signing up an additional 54 patients for insurance for 2021 coverage which assists patients’ overall health care and stretches our Ryan White grant funding for those others who need it. She additionally has pioneered ID’s Recovery Clinic (now in session every Wednesday afternoon) for HIV patients with comorbid chemical dependence.

When COVID-19 led to new ways of our providers seeing patients, including video visits, Betsy was a true leader in helping set the precedent and process for the ID clinic. She worked closely with nursing staff, providers and scheduling staff to ensure video visits ran smoothly. In an extremely busy division of Infectious Disease physicians during a pandemic, Betsy provided a calm in the storm.

She is praised for her exceptional performance in the ID clinic throughout the pandemic, covering additional outpatient needs for other ID providers so they could attend to the influx of hospitalized patients. Betsy is a vital part of the infectious diseases’ team, and we are proud to have Betsy in the Department of Medicine!