(l-r) Ana Mederos, CEO; Raquel Furones, Pharmacy Manager; Dr. Sylvia Torres, Residency Program Director; Dr. Jenny Martinez, PGY1 Pharmacy Resident; Dr. Daniel De Arazoza, PGY1 Pharmacy Resident; Mercy Urgelles, Clinical Pharmacy Manager; Dr. Mary Ibarra Diaz, DOP; Gina Diaz, COO

Palmetto General Hospital Pharmacy Department and its Administration proudly announce its First Annual Post Graduate Year One (PGY1) Pharmacy Residency Program Graduation Ceremony. The first two PGY1 Pharmacy Residents of the Inaugural Class of 2011 are Dr. Daniel De Arazoza, PharmD and Dr. Jenny Martinez, PharmD.
 
Palmetto General Hospital proud to have implemented a one year post-graduate Pharmacy Residency Program which prepares Pharmacy Residents with the skills and knowledge necessary to practice in patient care settings with a specialization in clinical pharmacy practice. As members of the healthcare team, residents are actively involved in medication therapies and patient-centered care.

 

 

 



Nova Southeastern University College of Osteopathic Medicine, in collaboration with Palmetto General Hospital in Hialeah, Florida, has launched a new critical care fellowship. The two-year program, officially named the NSU-COM/Palmetto General Hospital Critical Care Fellowship, has been approved by the American Osteopathic Association for two positions. Alex Morizio, M.D., has been appointed the founding program director.
 
“This is an important new program that will help serve the critical care needs of South Florida and beyond with culturally competent and caring physician experts,” said Robert Hasty, D.O., FACOI, assistant professor of internal medicine and director of the NSU-COM Internal Medicine Residency Program at Palmetto General Hospital.


Nova Southeastern University College of Osteopathic Medicine (NSU-COM) recently received university approval to establish its Master of Science in Disaster and Emergency Preparedness 36 credit-hour degree program, which is anticipated to commence in January 2012.
 
The program content, which will be offered in an all-online format, will incorporate interactive video and include an onsite meeting at the beginning of the students’ enrollment. An additional onsite meeting will be coordinated near the program’s conclusion to allow students to present their selected track practicum project and have it evaluated.
 
The new degree program, which is interdisciplinary in nature, is designed to provide students with the requisite theoretical knowledge and applied skills needed to work in the rapidly growing interdisciplinary field of emergency and disaster preparedness. The degree will allow students from a variety of disciplines to specialize in one of several tracks, which is why a community research practicum at the local, state, federal, or international level will be a key component of the program. Four degree tracks are offered: maritime safety and security, cyber security, law enforcement/criminal justice, and public health.
 
For additional information, contact Kelley Davis, Ph.D., academic program director, at (954) 262-1663 or Maria Alonso, program administrator for the Institute for Disaster and Emergency Preparedness, at (954) 262-1850.


In the presence of more than 500 guests, the 64 students who make up the inaugural class of Florida Atlantic University’s new Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine received their first white coats at a ceremony held in August to symbolically confirm their commitment to the profession of medicine. The doctor’s white coat has served as the pre-eminent symbol of physicians for more than 100 years. At the conclusion of the ceremony, the students recited in unison an “oath” they collectively wrote, which will serve as a code of conduct they are committed to following throughout their education and as physicians after medical school.
 
The 64 students in the inaugural class come from all walks of life, but they share the drive and passion to become physicians and help patients. Among the class members are a football player, a patent lawyer, a second lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force, a former bio-defense scientist, a philosopher, martial artists, musicians, two students with exceptional research backgrounds who have been admitted to the FAU/Scripps Florida M.D./Ph.D. program, a science teacher, and the youngest member who is only 19 years old.


Technology, which has dramatically changed our lives, has prepared us for a much simpler yet demanding and challenging future. The impact of technology in medical education is unparalleled at any point in history, while changes in all facets of medical education have occurred within short timeframes. Nova Southeastern University College of Osteopathic Medicine (NSU-COM) prides itself on providing cutting-edge medical education to its students, which is evidenced by the numerous technological upgrades it has implemented over the past several years.
 
Tegrity
NSU purchased the lecture-capture tool, Tegrity, which the college adopted for its curriculum use. This has been an invaluable instructional tool that allows instructors to create presentations that can be streamed to students over the Internet. After a class is captured, students using a secured network can log into WebCT and access the Tegrity service. By using Tegrity, students can review class content anytime, anywhere, and at their own pace to help them focus on topics that require more time to fully comprehend.
 
Turning Point
To enhance the interactive nature of medical education, NSU-COM installed the TurningPoint® Audience Response System, which allows faculty lecturers to include interactive questions and students to respond to questions on the fly during the course of a lecture by instantaneously “clicking” their responses. The TurningPoint® system used by NSU-COM faculty members communicates seamlessly with Microsoft PowerPoint. The hardware, which is small and minimal, includes a USB receiver plugged into the lecture hall computer and the audience keypads (i.e., “the clickers”) held in the students’ hands. Lecturers can easily insert questions that are formatted as multiple choice, true/false, yes/no, or other types of questions into their existing lecture presentations. The lecture hall computer automatically records all the individual student responses and generates a graph on the projection screen showing the percent of students who select each question option.
 
Education Management System
The college now uses an electronic data capture program called Education Management System to audio and videotape all student encounters in the Simulation Lab, which has 12 rooms equipped with two video cameras in each that provide the ability to view all angles of student human simulation (standardized patients) as well as high-fidelity mechanical simulation.
 
High-Fidelity Simulation
High-fidelity simulation is another modality available to faculty members and students. High-fidelity simulation helps guide student knowledge from acquisition to application and prepares them for clinical responsibilities. A high-fidelity mannequin is an extensive electronic computer with skin covering the body, which is programmed to perform simulated functions of various human conditions/diseases.
 
Electronic Medical Records
As health care embraced electronic medical/health records, an opportunity to provide another teaching/learning modality evolved at the college. In addition to learning traditional documentation such as SOAP notes, NSU-COM students are introduced to a student electronic medical record (EMR) system. The EMR is implemented into the high-fidelity simulation experience. Once students complete their “patient encounter,” they document the encounter in the EMR system as they will do during clinical rotations and residency training.
 
Second Life
Opportunities for practice in clinical environments help students learn to apply the knowledge they have gained as students. However, the demanding schedule and time constraints of a medical student present burdensome barriers. This challenge has provided an opportunity to add a new learning modality for students called Second Life that will allow them to develop a virtual clinic they can access at any time to practice clinical skills. In this manner, the college will teach students to design an avatar of themselves and “fly” to the NSU Virtual Clinic to practice on virtual patients using cases scenarios submitted by faculty members.
 
At NSU, the influence of technology in medical education provides an opportunity for continuous improvement whether in administration, curriculum, or educational modalities.