HSC NEWS - UT Health Science Center San Antonio

Four research teams receive UTS quality improvement grants

Posted: Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Sandra G. Adams, M.D., M.S., received a grant for $119,750 for a web-based educational program for health care practitioners to disseminate best practices in asthma treatment.
Sandra G. Adams, M.D., M.S., received a grant for $119,750 for a web-based educational program for health care practitioners to disseminate best practices in asthma treatment.

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By Rosanne Fohn

Four groups of researchers from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio have received Patient Safety and Healthcare Quality grants totaling $414,828 from The University of Texas System. The grants will be used for research, medical education or clinical collaboration projects.

The Health Science Center received more than half of the seven awards presented to research teams at UT System health science institutions.

Principal investigators of the grants — all faculty members in the School of Medicine — include:

Jan E. Patterson, M.D., M.S., and Luci Leykum, M.D., M.B.A., M.S., — $100,000 grant to study “Understanding the role of context in influencing improvement outcomes;”
Sandra Sanchez-Reilly, M.D., — $169,020 for “PAIN-ME-FREE: Pain Activity Interprofessional Nursing and Medical Student Education Focusing on Response, Effectiveness and decreasing side Effects among older adults;”
Sandra G. Adams, M.D., M.S., — $119,750 for “Web-based, Interactive Professional Education in Asthma (WipeAsthma) Tool to Disseminate Best-Practice Recommendations to Healthcare Professionals;” and
Noemi Adame, M.D., — $26,058 for her study, “The Impact of An Interprofessional Approach on the Quality of Family-Center Rounds: The FCR-IPE.”

More about the Health Science Center research teams and their projects are below.

Research
Drs. Patterson and Leykum will explore the important issue of how the local context shapes the success or failure of quality improvement and patient safety initiatives. They will study the projects conducted as part of the Clinical Safety & Effectiveness course to assess factors ranging from infrastructure to relationships among providers. “Because so many improvement initiatives are either not successful or sustained over time, understanding the role of context has become a critical issue in the field of improvement science,” Dr. Leykum said. More


Sandra Sanchez-Reilly, M.D., received $169,020 to develop an online, team-based, interactive game to teach the concept of total pain management to medical and nursing students, and undergraduate college students.

Medical education
Dr. Sanchez-Reilly’s team will develop an online, team-based, interactive game to teach medical and nursing students, and undergraduate college students interested in the health professions, about managing pain in elderly patients. Through the game, students will learn about the concept of total pain as it relates to safe and effective assessment of pain and pain management. The educational intervention will touch on the physical, spiritual, psychological and social aspects of pain. More

Dr. Adams and her team are developing a web-based educational program for health care practitioners to disseminate best practices in asthma treatment. “Asthma affects 300 million individuals worldwide and people are still dying from this treatable disease,” Dr. Adams said. “We are creating the WipeAsthma educational program in order to help bridge the gaps between what currently is happening in the care of patients with asthma compared to what should be happening, according to the evidence-based guidelines.” More

Clinical collaboration
Dr. Adame’s team is studying how to improve communication among health care providers and family members of pediatric patients in order to reduce medical errors. “Many of the errors that affect patient safety are caused by poor communication between health care team members. Additional research shows that patients have better outcomes when they or their family, in the case of pediatric patients, are involved in the decision-making process. The purpose of this project is to improve communication between physicians, nurses, pharmacists and pediatric patients’ families. We will be looking at the impact of this project on medication errors, patient satisfaction, nurse satisfaction and post-discharge compliance.” More