A high school classmate noted that the nicknames "Mud", and "Mr. Clean" was bestowed on him because he always looked so neatly dressed. Another classmate commented that he rarely wore shorts and his legs were so white ("shark bait" legs). Right now, he is a shark at the top of the food chain. |
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Arthur was also one of our class scholars with a 3.5 grade point average or higher in the National Honor Society, and also one of the 40 selective members of out Student Round Table. With a couple of girlfriends during high school, where did he find time? |
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Included in the following are some excerpts from an article in MidWeek by Sarah Pacheco on October 14, 2009 ==================== |
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Arthur graduated from Baldwin High before moving to the Mainland for college. After he obtained his bachelor’s of science in biology from Cornell College in Iowa, he spent a year of grad school studying molecular biology and getting his MA at the University of Iowa before deciding to switch career paths. “I realized I wasn’t going to win the Nobel Prize,” he says. “I realized working in the lab was really not what I wanted to do with my life, that I needed to have something that would be more meaningful to me.” |
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At the suggestion of a friend’s father, Ushijima enrolled in Iowa University’s hospital administration program. After two years he obtained his degree and moved on to working as a healthcare administrator with the Air Force. Arthhur served as a captain in the US Air Force medical service corps (1973-80). “At that point I hadn’t thought of coming back to Hawaii - it wasn’t in my career path. I thought I’d just stay on the Mainland,” Ushijima admits. “In health-care many people move around just because that’s how you build a career, because it’s hard to get all the experiences you want at one institution.” |
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As fate would have it, Ushijima got a call about a position at Queen’s that had opened up. He interviewed for the role of COO and executive vice president for QMC over Memorial Day weekend in 1989. Needless to say, he got the job and returned to the Islands with wife Ruth (a fellow Maui native) and their son in tow. In 1993 he was promoted to president of the medical center, then to CEO of The Queen’s Health Systems in 2005. |
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“It was time for me to come home, and it was time for me to make a difference,” Ushijima says. “Hawaii’s a challenging place to work, and I look back and all of my life up until that time was gaining a set of experiences that enabled me to serve this role.” |
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And what a role to have. Queen’s was and remains a leader in medical advancements, being the first hospital in Hawaii to: In addition, Queen’s is the only trauma center in Hawaii verified by the American College of Surgeons. |
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His other current board affiliations are Healthcare Association of Hawai‘i, Aloha Medical Mission Advisory Board, and VHA Inc., a national health care alliance based in Texas. He also served as a member of the search committee for the UH medical school dean. |