UK Team Places Second in National Competition
LEXINGTON, Ky. (April 19, 2010) − An interprofessional team of University of Kentucky students representing the colleges of Public Health and Medicine placed second in the nation in the CLARION Competition, a contest designed to demonstrate the collective knowledge of the team and focused on advancing interprofessional student learning, patient safety and patient care.
Following a local competition, a team consisting of David Bardach and Ayodele Osasona from the College of Medicine and Shoshana Bardach from the College of Public Health, competed in the national competition held at the University of Minnesota. The Clarion competition enables students to achieve a 360-degree perspective on patient safety and how it might be improved. The point of the competition is to take a "systems approach" to a hypothetical clinical case scenario in which the health system failed and analyze what went wrong by completing a root cause analysis. Teams demonstrate how to improve the system by utilizing a broadened perspective, informed by the many disciplines potentially involved in care. The final analysis is presented to a team of interprofessional judges that evaluate the team’s analysis in the context of real world standard practice.
UK has participated in the Clarion competition for three years and has UK’s full administrative support. This year, in addition to assistance from the deans and faculty from all six medical colleges as well as the UK Colleges of Social Work and Law, UK Provost Kumble Subbaswamy provided financial support for the endeavor.
"UK is committed to interprofessional education, research and practice and is an institution that prides itself on clinical collaboration across many services and colleges," said Kevin Schuer, physician assistant and faculty member in the Department of Clinical Sciences, Division of Physician Assistant Studies at the UK College of Health Sciences. "What makes the Clarion experience so unique is that, among many other things, it affords our students a rich opportunity to partner with students from other colleges and programs to solve a complex clinical problem. It is one of the goals of the institution to embed these interprofessional learning experiences into our curricula, recognizing that health care is way too complex for any one profession to have all the answers. Clarion introduces to our students the important concept of the 'team approach to care' both from a didactic as well as applicative standpoint. Clarion further demonstrates that the University of Kentucky is becoming recognized on a national level for providing these opportunities to our students and how UK is a model for this type of learning. It has been very rewarding to see our student and faculty growth around Interprofessional learning."
UK student participants in the local competition were Carl Chandler from the UK College of Dentistry; Steven Blevins and Amber Swain from the UK College of Law; David Bardach, David Nelson, Ayodele Osasona and Shea Poynter from the UK College of Medicine; Cassandra Hickman and Stacia Street from the UK College of Pharmacy; and Shoshana Bardach and Debbie Dunn from the UK College of Public Health.
Faculty advisors for the teams include: Kevin Schuer, and Janice Kuperstein from the College of Health Sciences; Dr. Kris Lohr and Andrea Pfeifle from the College of Medicine; Gregory Cobetto and Ronald Botto from the College of Dentistry; Lynne Jensen from the College of Nursing; Mikael Jones from the College of Pharmacy; Anthony Hartsfield from the College of Public Health, Beth Mills from the College of Social Work; and Joe Conigliaro and Jamie Srinath from the UK Center for Enterprise Quality and Safety. The power of Clarion is also demonstrated by the number of students who competed in previous years and then participated this year as Clarion faculty. These advisors include: Logan Davies from the College of Medicine, Patrick Bowman, College of Dentistry, Brittany Warrick, College of Pharmacy, John Kim and Michael Mitchell, College of Public Health.
"Groups such as the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), as well as the Institute of Medicine (IOM), have recommended that institutions of higher learning begin to look at ways to educate our students interprofessionally," said Janice Kuperstein, chair of the Department of Rehabilitation Sciences in the College of Health Sciences. "The sustainability of our health care system depends on these opportunities. Clarion serves as one example that we not only wish to be leaders, but we are recognized as leaders in this area."
The award winning national Clarion team will be giving their presentation at noon on April 27 in MN 263, UK Chandler Hospital. Lunch will be provided. This event is open to all faculty, students and staff.