Competition shows leadership, teamwork
by Cindy
AbolePublic Relations
In MUSC’s first campuswide inter-professional competition, four student teams competed and demonstrated the value of teamwork, leadership, organization and good communication skills as keys to building effective health care teams for the future.
The top team, Aaron Embry (Health Professions), Robert Hendry (Medicine), Manasi Sinha (Medicine) and Karen Spry (Pharmacy) along with advisor Maralynne Mitcham, Ph.D., College of Health Professions, was awarded $3,000 in scholarship money and the right to represent MUSC in the 2006-07 National Clinician Administrator Relationship Improvement Organization, or Clarion Competition. Clarion is a student-driven, faculty-supported program created in 2000 at the University of Minnesota that supports interprofessional experiences among its health professions students.
College of Medicine
student Amanda Barnhorst presents her team's information for the Nov.
16 MUSC Clarion Competition. Team members are Caryn Hoang, CHP, Jarrett
Walsh, CGS, Seth Zeigler, COP, and Dr. David Bradford, advisor.The effort was part of a collaborative venture initiated by MUSC students and supported by faculty interested in exploring new ideas for leadership and interdisciplinary activities among students.
The idea caught the attention of Tony Chipas, Ph.D., associate professor and program director for the Anesthesia for Nurses program, College of Health Professions and David Garr, M.D., associate dean for community medicine and executive director of South Carolina Area Health Education Consortium (AHEC). Both share an interest in quality improvement in health care following the industry’s response to the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) 1999 report on patient safety and subsequent testament calling for health care changes outlined in IOM’s 2001 report, “Crossing the Quality Chasm.”
They were also supporters of the institution’s first venture exploring the values of interprofessional education last January with first-year students representing each of the campus’ six colleges.
Chipas immediately recognized the competition’s significance through previous work with the Institute for Health Care Improvement.
“Clarion can be considered the capstone among interprofessional education projects on campus,” said Chipas. “It involves teams of students from different colleges who learn to work together and compete for the benefit of the team and not each other. It’s not a far cry from the realities seen in actual health care teams.”
Additionally, student and faculty involvement with the competition support previous interprofessional activities initiated by campus administration. The effort underscores additional support to MUSC’s effort to gain re-accreditation with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS). Interprofessional education was cited as the institution’s quality enhancement plan project.
Concurrently, pharmacy student leaders Brie Dunn and MacKenzie Turner were actively seeking a competitive leadership project involving students and supporting Phi Lambda Sigma, the national pharmacy leadership society. Ultimately, Dunn and Turner, along with SGA President Mike Drake, were invited to serve as student representatives along with five faculty members to expand MUSC's Interprofessional Planning Committee.
Chipas met with the pharmacy students last spring and presented details about the campus’ interest in sponsoring a local Clarion competition for students to MUSC’s Student Government Association. Planning committee members were pleased to discover an immediate interest among students with Clarion and assembled 13 randomized, multi-disciplinary teams. Teams had a total of seven weeks to complete the project and were allowed to use whatever resources were available. Mirroring national Clarion competition rules, finalists were asked to present their findings in a 25-minute oral presentation and be able to field questions during a 10-minute question-and-answer period.
Due to time constraints, organizers agreed to use information from a previous national Clarion case competition to serve as the local case topic.
Working quickly, the planning committee organized Clarion planning workshops to help guide participants as they prepared the project’s first step, a root cause analysis based on an imaginary sentinel health event. Participants were invited to a team-building and logistics workshop Sept. 26. That workshop featured help in preparing each team's root cause analysis and cost analysis report.
“Students are where this all started,” Dunn said. “The support we received from MUSC as a whole was amazing. MUSC leadership, the deans, students and staff provided good support for anything that we needed. I think it’s important that everyone recognize the effort given by participating students and faculty. They devoted countless hours of their time, in addition to their regular studies and teaching time, to support this. Everyone did a great job.”
A total of seven teams ultimately submitted their final presentations. Just four teams were chosen to present at the Nov. 16 campus competition. Judges for MUSC’s inaugural Clarion competition included Oscar Lovelace, M.D., an MUSC alumnus and rural family medicine practitioner; Marion Burton, M.D., associate dean for clinical affairs, University of South Carolina School of Medicine; Lillian Trettin, Ph.D., assistant professor, MUSC Department of Library Sciences and Informatics; and Jim Zoeller, Ph.D., chairman of the Department of Health Administration and Policy, College of Health Professions and project cost analysis expert.
Ultimately, Mitcham’s team walked away with the first place award and the opportunity to represent MUSC among nine other teams at the National Clarion Competition event April 13 - 14 event at the University of Minnesota.
“This was a wonderful enrichment opportunity for student-participants,” said Mitcham, Ph.D., professor and program director of the Occupational Therapy Educational Program, Department of Rehabilitative Sciences, College of Health Professions. “Capitalizing on individual differences, background and experiences, team members quickly learned that working together solves problems more effectively. This is the essence of interprofessional education. My role was to provide input in what was already a good set of solutions and help shape it for better effect. I coached the team by emphasizing confidence and poise in their presentation skills, and clearly the students' skills and abilities shone through under competition conditions. It brought me great joy to be part of this experience and to witness the students' success.”
There’s little time for this group of student to rest on their laurels. Following their return after the holidays, they will regroup and focus on the task at hand— preparing for nationals and the upcoming February national Clarion teleconference retreat when the team will formally receive information on their national case analysis. They will have a total of eight weeks to prepare for the April competition. First prize is $5,000 for the winning team.
“I was completely blown away by the caliber of work and talent put forth in these presentations,” Chipas said. “Any one of these four teams could have been chosen the winner. To me, each of the groups that participated in this project was a winner because they received a level of education that can’t be taught in the classroom. It comes from working together with others.”
MUSC Clarion Competition—Nov. 16
First Place [$3,000 scholarship]: Aaron Embry (Health Professions); Robert Hendry (Medicine); Manasi Sinha (Medicine); Karen Spry (Pharmacy); Maralynne Mitcham, Ph.D., (Health Professions), advisor
Second Place [$2,000 scholarship]: Amanda Kuehnle (Health Professions); Dana Sox (Pharmacy); Adrian Sproul (Graduate Studies); Cindy Allen, Ph.D., (Nursing), advisor
Third Place [$1,000 scholarship]: Dan-Victor Guirgiutiu (Medicine); Jennifer Hall (Health Professions); Amy Martinez (Pharmacy); Sahar Saddoughi (Graduate Studies); David Morrisette, Ph.D., (Health Professions) advisor
Honorable Mention—Amanda Barnhorst (Medicine); Caryn Hoang (Health Professions); Jarrett Walsh (Graduate Studies); Seth Zeigler (Pharmacy); David Bradford, Ph.D., (Health Professions) advisor
Friday, Dec. 8, 2006
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