University of Vermont medical student Luke Neill, Class of 2016, is working with his long-time friend, Sam Meyer, on software that will do just that – give pharmacists and other healthcare providers a way to reach patients on a device they use all of the time – their cell phones. This low-cost idea could empower patients to take charge of their health, help to avoid additional problems or potentially life-threatening complications, and reduce the public health cost of medical non-compliance, which is estimated to total about $100 to $300 billion annually in the U.S. alone.

Although smartphone and computer applications for inputting personal medication information already exist, this software allows doctors and pharmacists to set up the messages and track compliance data. Meyer is working on the programming; Neill is developing the specific functions that will be useful for providers and patients. As a service that’s free to patients, this system is meant to reach populations that might not otherwise have access to such support.

“There’s a large problem in the U.S. with medication adherence,” Neill says. “We want to address that in a way that’s cost-effective.”

This month, the pair will have the chance to present their project at the Clinton Global Initiative University Conference at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, held April 5 to 7, 2013. Social activists, celebrities, political leaders, and experts in technology, business, and other fields – including former President Bill Clinton himself – come to this meeting to learn and support innovative ideas from students. Last year, more than 1,000 students from all 50 states were invited attend.

All invitees create a “Commitment to Action” that is specific and measureable, and geared to help on any scale – from the local to the global.

“Access to basic health information and instruction is one of the primary obstacles to improving healthcare globally,” Neill states in his Commitment to Action. “By leveraging the simplicity and ubiquity of text messages, I will be able to provide patients who lack the typical healthcare infrastructure with relevant and specific instruction and support.”

Neill’s and Meyer’s HIPAA-compliant software program allows patients to enroll at the pharmacy and then begin receiving text messages that help them understand their medications and implications for their health. The messages are not simply reminders, Neill says; they are designed to monitor behavior patterns and change habits as well.

“The best part is that we can contextualize the feedback and give it to them,” says Neill. Providers also benefit from aggregate data on compliance. Eventually, the goal is to make the software available in developing countries where access to other technology is limited, but cell phone use is widespread.

Neill set up a pilot to test the software with first-year students at the College of Medicine and help work out any bugs prior to the Clinton conference; next he plans to network with local pharmacists for a trial. All of these efforts come with a price tag – ultimately Neill and Meyer will be faced with applying for FDA approval, which can be a costly legal process.  Neill said he’s been in contact with some foundations and non-profits interested in helping support the cause.

The Clinton Global Initiative University could be beneficial on the financial front as well: More than $400,000 in seed funding is available to attendees. Neill’s commitment has also been selected for recognition prior to a panel discussion on Ensuring Medication Safety, as an exemplary approach to addressing a global public health challenge.

“It’ll be great to be at the conference and constantly surrounded by people with motivations I share,” Neill says. “Great ideas will come out of it.”

A Lake Placid, N.Y. native who attended UVM as an undergrad, Neill says he’s also hoping to build a connection between UVM and the Clinton Global Initiative University for future students. “I’m really grateful to the UVM College of Medicine,” Neill said. “I’m representing the College at the conference.”

The CME (Continuing Medical Education) Educator of the Year award recipient receives $1,500 cash and a $6,000 education grant. This year’s winner is Mark Hamlin, M.D., UVM associate professor of anesthesiology and director of anesthesia critical care and medical director of respiratory care services at Fletcher Allen. He has twice received Fletcher Allen’s Anesthesiology Teacher of the Year Award and is the course co-director for Northern New England Critical Care conferences.

John Lawrence, M.D., UVM associate professor of surgery and pediatric surgeon at Fletcher Allen, is the recipient of the GME (Graduate Medical Education) Teacher of the Year Award, which provides the recipient with $1,500 cash and a $6,000 education grant. Lawrence has received numerous teaching awards in his career and is known for challenging residents and students to think thoroughly about each patient encounter, and for holding them to high standards.

The UVM Medical Group consists of approximately 450 physicians from all fields of medicine devoted to advancing patient care through clinical and laboratory research, and educating the next generation of providers.

After thoroughly testing the devices, the College decided to purchase a tablet for every member of the class of 2015, said Jill Jemison, director of technology services for the College of Medicine. They were distributed to students March 8, making the College one of the first medical schools in the country to be using this particular tablet as a professional tool.

Functionality is key. After the device debuted in the summer of 2012, information technology staff and several students vetted the tablet to make sure it worked with all of the tools and applications medical students commonly use, including COMET, the College’s online learning environment, the College’s email and calendar system, a virtual microscope application, a clinical interaction tracker, and several other programs. The tablet, which uses the Android operating system and apps from the Google Play store, performed well in all of the tests, Jemison said. The devices are also equipped with the same sophisticated security features as smartphones and other tablets supported by the College.

“The goal is for students to be able to bring them as a reference device,” Jemison said. “This is evidence-based medicine at their fingertips.”

One of the main selling points was cost: At just under $200 each, the tablets carry a “price point we could feel good about,” Jemison said.  Other universities jumped into the tablet market earlier, in some cases relying on one-time grant funding for more expensive devices, but Jemison said she wanted to make sure costs “were not passed along to students.”

“If this is an important learning device it needs to be something we support and sustain,” she said.

Andy Jones, a second-year medical student who helped test the tablet, said the convenience and functionality of the device make it a viable tool for students.

“It’s a world of well-respected peer reviewed information in your pocket,” he said.

Before pursuing medicine Jones spent six years in the information technology field, most recently as associate director of help desk services at California College of the Arts, so his background makes him particularly suited to vetting the tablet’s technical features.

“Everything I wanted to go to my computer to do I went to the tablet first,” he said, finding that its ease of use and portability was great for doing research and accessing information quickly.

Bud Vana, a third-year medical student, brought his own tablet with him during clerkships in Maine, Connecticut, and at Fletcher Allen Health Care, with an eye on trying it out as a reference device. He consulted with the IT staff as they tested the Google tablets and will be on hand to help train students. During his clerkships, he found himself using it to quickly access the most current information available, including potential drug interactions or relevant research. At a site in Maine, he was able to pull up new information on genetic diseases for a pediatric geneticist. At another site, he could access in a moment statistics a pulmonary doctor needed about a rare condition.

“It’s a way we can become more useful to the attending and help out the team,” he said. “It makes us more productive.”

As the volume of medical research continues to grow, Jemison said knowing “the question to ask and the database to use” will only become more important for physicians. This, in turn, has implications for medical education.

“Most of technology is culture change,” she said. “We have to be respectful of the change it will have in the teaching culture.”

Introducing the tablets now is an opportunity for students to learn early on how they want to integrate technology into their practice. For Vana, he sees it as preparation for his career and fodder for thought on how “these devices may improve the patient/doctor experience.”

“This is an opportunity to learn etiquette and best practices,” he said. “UVM can send out medical students to harness this technology in the right way.”

Clerkship directors will also be receiving tablets and training on how to use them, Jemison said, but ultimately students will be leading the way. In some cases, this may mean having conversations with practitioners at their clerkships sites regarding how and when they are using the tablets.

“The students are going to have to be ambassadors for this technology,” she said. “They have the opportunity to help change the culture.”

Larner and his wife Helen, who live in California, have a long history of giving at the UVM College of Medicine. In 1985, they established the Larner Endowment Fund to provide significant support for financially needy and superior medical students at the College, with a goal of helping as many students as possible, and creating a culture of “giving back” that would continue to develop the Fund as its recipients and others moved on into their professional life. To date, the Fund has provided financial support to more than 1000 UVM medical students and receives over 150 alumni contributions annually. Most recently, the Larner Fund has changed to help students even more, by providing loan deferments through residency years, with extended repayment periods.

Manufactured by Laerdal Medical Corporation, Harvey® The Cardiopulmonary Patient Simulator is a full-sized manikin that can realistically simulate a range of 30 different cardiac diseases, from less complex conditions to rare, complicated scenarios. Harvey is portable, so can be moved from a location in the Clinical Simulation Lab’s virtual hospital setting to any environment in which a patient may be examined. Students, residents and cardiologists can feel pulses and use built-in stethoscopes – which are connected via infra-red technology to the manikin – to listen to six different breath sounds and nine different cardiac auscultation areas. At the touch of a button, blood pressure, pulses, heart sounds and murmurs can be changed. The Clinical Simulation Lab currently has 10 extra stethoscopes for each manikin.  The infra-red allows the entire class to hear what the instructor or student at the manikin are hearing.

“We are very grateful for Dr. Larner’s generous contribution, which supports the Clinical Simulation Laboratory in its mission to enhance the quality of patient care through innovations in education and clinical training,” says Ted James, M.D., associate professor of surgery and director of clinical simulation. “The use of advanced simulators such as Harvey helps our diffuse population of learners to master complex clinical skills leading to better patient care.”

In addition to the Harvey® simulators, Larner also facilitated the Clinical Simulation Lab’s acquisition of a “Choking Charlie,” an adult torso designed specifically for training students in the performance of the Heimlich Abdominal Thrust Maneuver. Larner lost a family member to choking and wanted to ensure students had an opportunity to learn how to accurately perform this lifesaving technique.

Read more information about Harvey®.

Visit the Clinical Simulation Laboratory website.

Diagnostic laboratories are primarily clinical and used for the diagnosis of disease, but can also function as data collection sites. Using laboratory techniques and technology helps ensure a more accurate diagnosis and treatment. According to Ackerman and Cooch, “Studies show that one microscope can significantly change diagnosis and treatment.” In one study of cases in Tanzania, out of about 4,500 patients treated for malaria, only 46.1 percent had malaria; the rest had other conditions, like bacterial sepsis, that had been misdiagnosed.

The two medical students, who are mentored by Majid Sadigh, M.D., director of Global Health at the UVM College of Medicine’s clinical teaching partner Danbury Hospital/Western Connecticut Health Network, learned that “simply bringing a microscope into an established clinic changed everything 180 degrees.” However, they also determined that there is a lack of supplies and training to gain the necessary skills to conduct lab tests using microscopes. Among their objectives is to distribute microscopes – several dozen of which they have received via College of Medicine Senior Associate Dean for Medical Education William Jeffries, Ph.D. – and others from the UVM/Fletcher Allen Department of Pathology, create a lab manual that is region-specific, and provide the new laboratory sites with funding.

With assistance from Sadigh, they have developed a relationship with physicians at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, via email communication, and have been invited to set up labs in strategic locations throughout that country.

Over the past several months, first- and second-year UVM medical students have participated in a series of basic microscopy and laboratory techniques sessions in conjunction with the project. First, Cooch and Ackerman led a basic microscopy session reviewing the parts of the microscope and trained their fellow students in tissue examination approaches. At a second session, Christine Griffin, M.S., senior lecturer in medical laboratory and radiation sciences in the UVM College of Nursing and Health Sciences, taught students how to make peripheral blood smears – something they do not get to do in medical school. The participating students returned a week later to learn how to interpret the slides they made on the microscopes. Mary Tang, M.D., associate professor of pathology, who trained Cooch in blood smear and diagnostic techniques, and Abiy Ambaye, M.D., associate professor of pathology, have assisted with this training effort.

“I came away so empowered with these techniques,” says Cooch, who has volunteered at clinics in Guatemala prior to and during medical school. Ackerman, who was a classical musician before learning laboratory techniques at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston prior to coming to UVM, agrees. “These simple laboratory techniques give us a world of information about our patients,” he says. “If you’re working overseas with limited resources, being able to do a blood smear on your own is invaluable.”

The next training session, which is tentatively planned for February 2013, will focus on how to perform fine needle aspirate (FNAs) – drawing out cells for examination under a microscope – and will be led by Ambaye. Students will learn this technique by either working with cadavers or using a simulated method that will allow them to practice the procedure and analyze the cells. Medical students and residents are eligible to apply for a microscope from TME and use the techniques they have learned to set up laboratories.

“UVM medical students and residents may be able to travel to labs around the world to share their technical skills and bring needed equipment and reagents, which will foster retention of the onsite technicians,” says Cooch.

In the meantime, Ackerman is working on gaining access to cytogenetics (fluorescence microscopes), and he and Cooch will be co-authoring (with Ackerman’s former MGH mentor, Dr. Aliyah Sohani) a chapter on essential laboratory skills for global health for a textbook being published by Wiley-Blackwell as part of their Essentials series. The lab manual, which is being worked on with pathology faculty, “will be heavy on photos and pictures, and simplified and translated so that everyone can understand it,” says Ackerman. UVM medical students, led by second-year medical student Elizabeth Landell, have also been assisting with conducting a literature review regarding setting up labs in resource-poor regions.

Cooch and Ackerman plan to travel to Haiti in March 2013 and then spend a month in Uganda during their fourth year of medical school. Any spare time they can find while in the middle of clinical rotations is spent soliciting more donations of lab materials and funding from outside institutions. In addition, the TME has a website, developed by first-year medical students Taylor Goller and Colette Oesterle, and Cooch and Ackerman have applied for a 503c tax ID number so that The Microscope Exchange is eligible to receive financial gifts to help propel the program – and its mission – forward.

Designed to encourage developing young scientists to pursue careers in various aspects of tropical disease research, the award is presented to outstanding young researchers during the ASTMH Annual Meeting. Bessoff discussed his research on “Improving Therapeutics for the Treatment of Cryptosporidiosis using High Throughput Methods” as part of the Young Investigator Award program at the conference.

“We study a parasite called Cryptosporidium parvum, which, along with another closely related parasite, causes a diarrheal disease known as cryptosporidiosis,” says Bessoff. “The disease is a leading cause of diarrhea in the developing world, and is particularly devastating to AIDS patients and little children. Currently, there are no vaccines or effective treatments available.”

Bessoff has been working with mentor Christopher Huston, M.D., associate professor of medicine, since 2010. According to Huston, there is little incentive for the pharmaceutical industry to develop treatments for the developing world and methods to work on Cryptosporidium parasites are severely lacking.

“To address both of these issues, Kovi took a ‘drug repurposing approach’ – focusing on identification of drugs already approved for other uses that can possibly be used to treat cryptosporidiosis,” explains Huston.

The approach paid off. Bessoff developed the first high-throughput cell-based screening assay to identify drugs that inhibit growth of Cryptosporidium parvum within intestinal epithelial cells. Then, using his unique method to screen a library of drugs, he was able to identify 16 drugs that inhibit Cryptosporidium growth.

“We discovered that the cholesterol-lowering drug pitavastatin has good activity against the parasite,” Bessoff says. “We believe that it inhibits Cryptosporidium parvum growth by the same mechanism that it employs to reduce cholesterol levels and think this provides sufficient evidence to conduct human clinical trials of pitavastatin for the treatment of cryptosporidiosis.”

Proud mentor Huston is excited about the potential of these candidate drugs for treatment of cryptosporidiosis.

“A great deal is known about the mechanism of action for many of the drugs, because of the compound libraries that we chose to screen, and this enabled us to formulate hypotheses about how they affect Cryptosporidium parasites,” he says. “Kovi followed-up on one of the most interesting drug leads, which is an inhibitor of the host cell enzyme HMG-CoA reductase.”

In collaboration with Adam Sateriale, another Cellular, Molecular and Biomedical Sciences graduate student also working in Huston’s lab, Bessoff used the drug and a bioinformatics analysis of the Cryptosporidium genome to prove that Cryptosporidium parvum is dependent on host cell synthesis of isoprenoid precursors. The team determined that the parasite appears to require isoprenoids for many biochemical processes, but cannot synthesize them itself.

Huston credits Bessoff with not only identifying potential treatments for Cryptosporidiosis, but also elucidating critical information about Cryptosporidium biology that can be shared with scientists in the field. 

Co-organized by Barbara Frankowski, M.D., professor of pediatrics, and Charlotte Reback, M.D., assistant professor of family medicine and director of the College of Medicine’s Generations course, the event provides an opportunity for second-year medical students to learn about adolescence from adolescents. Vermont Integrated Curriculum Coordinator Aaron Hurwitz works with VUMC teachers to ensure the event’s success.

Delivered by teams of two, the seventh-graders’ presentations focused on a wide variety of adolescent-related topics, such as concussions, acne, and suicide. Middle-schoolers and medical students alike benefit from this learning experience, which is an eagerly anticipated highlight of the seven-week course covering a wide range of topics from reproduction to death.

Following the presentations in Carpenter, the middle school students broke up into small groups and joined medical students for an hour-long discussion in the Medical Education Center.

“People with disabilities are almost twice as likely as people without disabilities to report that, on one or more occasions, they did not get the medical services they needed,” says Contompasis, underscoring the need to offset this trend by preparing future physicians to gain an understanding and appreciation for the circumstances their future disabled patients confront on a daily basis.

To help second-year UVM medical students sharpen their disability awareness skills, Contompasis developed a curriculum that puts students in front of and in the “shoes” of deaf and disabled individuals. The workshop – which took place on November 7, 2012 – uses a mix of deaf and disabled community member panel presentations and mobility, visual, hearing and other impairment simulation activities. Medical students get a sense of what life is like after a stroke, or when blind, or without the ability to communicate verbally, as they navigate various rooms and hallways in the UVM College of Medicine Medical Education Center and Given buildings using equipment that helps simulate disabilities.

“My task was to communicate with only my eyes,” said a former medical student of his disability simulation experience. “I found it very frustrating, from the patient’s perspective, to have to go in circles with the ‘doctor’ to convey my problem. It was virtually impossible to rely on eye movement alone.”

“Doors were my greatest enemy, as were things that required movement of the wheelchair in addition to tasks requiring one or both hands, such as holding a cup of hot coffee while navigating through a cafeteria line, or trying to use the lavatory or maneuver through the library,” said one medical student following her experience.

Contompasis, a developmental pediatrician who cares for children and adolescents with developmental, learning, and/or behavioral problems, also serves as program director of UVM’s Interdisciplinary Leadership Education Program for Health Professionals (ILEHP), which focuses on interdisciplinary training, developmental disability awareness, developmental screening, and autism.

“Our data from this workshop show that students experience significant changes in awareness and attitudes following the disability awareness activities,” Contompasis says. “Many students cite specific ways they might practice in the future, such as being more inclusive and helpful to patients with disabilities.”

Funded through generous contributions from Fletcher Allen Health Care, members of the Vermont Medical Society, and the Chittenden County Medical Society, the scholarship is awarded annually by the Foundation to medical students who are committed to practicing medicine in Vermont and caring for Vermonters. The scholarship program, created by Mildred Reardon, M.D., UVM professor emerita of medicine, was created to encourage young doctors to return to Vermont after completing their residency training. Reardon was instrumental in forming the Vermont Medical Society Education and Research Foundation.

Originally from New Hampshire, Patten earned a bachelor’s degree in animal science in 2009 from UVM, where she participated in the Premedical Enhancement Program (PEP). A joint offering of the College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and the College of Medicine, PEP provides enhanced opportunities for a select group of highly qualified first-year undergraduate students undertaking a premedical curriculum. PEP students have access to a practicing physician-mentor and other medicine-related opportunities while they pursue an undergraduate degree.

The vice president of the UVM College of Medicine’s Student Council, a student ambassador and a former varsity cross country runner, Patten hopes to practice family medicine in Vermont. Her extensive volunteer service includes counseling Vermont high school students aspiring to enter the medical profession, working as a high school math tutor, teaching health lessons at local elementary schools, and organizing volunteer work and co-directing a girls health and fitness program at the Burlington Boys and Girls Club. She also previously worked as an in-home health provider with Armistead Caregiver Services and as a veterinary technician assistant at VCA Brown Animal Hospital.

“It is our hope and intention that by offering this annual scholarship we can successfully persuade medical students to practice medicine in Vermont, especially in its less-served areas, ensuring that Vermonters in all parts of the state continue to have access to excellent medical care,” says Reardon.

Learn more about the Vermont Medical Society and the UVM PEP program.

(This article was adapted from a news release produced for the Vermont Medical Society by Justin Campfield of ThinkSpark Media.)

Originally from Malaysia, Newick joined the CMB Program in the fall of 2009 and works in Heintz’s lab studying the cell biology of mesothelioma with an aim to discover novel therapy targets for the treatment of this disease. She received a travel award to attend the International Mesothelioma Interest Group (iMIG) meeting, which took place September 11 to 14, 2012 in Boston, Mass., where she presented a poster titled “Combinatorial Approaches for Targeting Mitochondrial Redox Signaling and FOXM1 Expression in Malignant Mesothelioma.” Newick’s co-investigators on this research include Heintz, Brooke Mossman, Ph.D., professor of pathology, Arti Shukla, Ph.D., associate professor of pathology, fellow CMB graduate student Brian Cunniff, and several other colleagues. She previously was awarded a travel fellowship by the Society for Free Radical Biology in 2009 and was first author on a paper titled "Peroxiredoxin 3 is a redox-dependent target of thiostrepton in malignant mesothelioma," which was recently published in PLoS ONE. Newick graduated from the University of Arizona with a B.S. and M.S. in microbiology.

Brian Cunniff, also a doctoral student in the CMB Program, was recently awarded a four-month Society for Free Radical Biology and Medicine Research mini-fellowship, which began in September 2012. Currently working in Cambridge, England with Michael Murphy, Ph.D., in the Mitochondrial Biology Unit of the Medical Research Council, Cunniff is conducting a research project titled “Combinatorial Approaches for Targeting Mitochondrial Redox Signalling and FOXM1 Expression in Malignant Mesothelioma.” He was also recently presented a Young Investigator Award for his platform presentation titled “Mitochondrial Architecture, Oxidant Production and Redox Signaling in Malignant Mesothelioma Cells,” at the Society for Free Radical Research International meeting, which was held September 6 to 9, 2012, at Imperial College in London, England. Cunniff received a B.A. degree from The Elms College in Chicopee, Mass., and worked as a cytogenetics technologist at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Mass., prior to coming to UVM in the fall of 2009.

The ceremony marked a first for newly-appointed Associate Dean for Student Affairs Christa Zehle, M.D., an associate professor of pediatrics and pediatrician at UVM/Fletcher Allen and Class of 1999 College of Medicine alumna, who began her new role at the College of Medicine just one month prior to the Class of 2016’s arrival on August 6, 2012. Zehle delivered the keynote presentation at the event. Additional presenters included William Jeffries, Ph.D., senior associate dean for medical education, Frederick C. Morin III, M.D., dean of the UVM College of Medicine, and John Brumsted, M.D., president and CEO of Fletcher Allen. Zehle, Morin, Brumsted, and Tania Bertsch, M.D., associate dean for clinical education and associate professor of medicine, assisted with cloaking students with their first white coats at the event.

To date, members of the Class of 2016 have studied Clinical Decision Making, Cell/Molecular Biology and are currently immersed in the 12-week-long Human Structure and Function course, which focuses on the composition of the human body and how it performs through an integrated study of microscopic and gross anatomy, physiology, basic imaging principles, embryology and clinical skills. The course integrates traditional educational methods with innovative computer-based lessons, small-group learning, and hands-on learning with Standardized Patients in the Clinical Simulation Laboratory.

The event was broadcast live via videostreaming beginning at 1:45 p.m. on October 20.  Photographs and a link to the ceremony video will be available the week of October 22 at http://med.uvm.edu/medphoto.

The University of Vermont Medical Alumni Association, Fletcher Allen Health Care, and the UVM College of Medicine Dean’s Office provided white coats for the ceremony, and the Arnold P. Gold Foundation provided Humanism in Medicine lapel pins for each student.

Background Information on the White Coat Ceremony:

• Physicians dressed in black until the late 19th century, due to the association of black attire as formal. Physicians adopted the white coat as a symbol of purity at the beginning of the 20^th century.
  (Source: Mark Hochberg, M.D., “The Doctor's White Coat--an Historical Perspective,” American Medical Association Journal of Ethic’s Virtual Mentor website, April 2007)
• According to the Arnold P. Gold Foundation, the White Coat Ceremony helps establish a psychological contract for the practice of medicine.
• Initiated on August 20, 1993 at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, this annual ceremony or a similar rite now takes place at about 90 percent of schools of medicine and osteopathy in the United States.

King’s project proposal, titled “Teaching Professionalism through Lessons from the Board of Medical Practice,” is designed to provide more effective and innovative training in professionalism for medical students. Among the proposal’s objectives are familiarity with the State of Vermont Medical Board’s licensing, regulation and discipline activities; an understanding of the Medical Board’s statutes and rules regarding unprofessional conduct; an ability to relate real-world examples of such conduct; and a comprehensive understanding of the range of complaints submitted, as well as the complaint process.

Given the complexity of intensive care provision, simulated team learning is at the center of Leclair’s project, titled “Simulation Training for Multidisciplinary Intensive Care Unit Teams: Active Learning to Promote Best Practices.” Her program seeks to develop a novel, innovative curriculum for both medical students and residents and involves other multidisciplinary team members, in an effort to promote team building through active learning and case-based simulation. Leclair’s ultimate goal is to transform medical student and resident education in the ICU and build teamwork skills while improving healthcare provider satisfaction and quality of delivered care.

Palumbo and Sandoval’s project, “Developing Best Practices in Communication when Using the Electronic Health Record for Nurse Practitioner and Medical Students and their Preceptors,” aims to evaluate the effect of current EHR documentation on patient satisfaction and practitioner evaluation, develop and test best practices, pilot a new curriculum incorporating these best practices and disseminate faculty development materials through educational sessions at UVM and nationally.

Coffey and McVeigh’s project, titled “Palliative Care Outreach in a Small Rural State,” seeks to identify the palliative care learning needs of clinicians in Vermont and design a program based on the results through focus groups and surveys. The program will include didactic sessions and stimulation with standardized patients. The project will be assessed by gathering data in a formal pre- and post-test format and obtaining feedback from participants. The intent of the project is to provide clinicians with the skills to work with patients and families at the end of life, supporting them holistically with compassionate, skilled care.

The Frymoyer Scholars program is an investment in outstanding medical education and promotes teaching that emphasizes the art of patient care. Scholars are selected based on the quality of their project proposal; the strength of the project's contribution to improvement of the relationship between clinician and patient; and evidence of commitment to clinical education, commitment to project and support of department/division program. The program is supported by The John and Nan Frymoyer Fund for Medical Education. Frymoyer served as dean of the UVM College of Medicine from 1991 to 1999 and also served as CEO of Fletcher Allen from 1995 to 1997. His late wife Nan Frymoyer was a former community health nurse and had a strong interest in patient advocacy. She served on the UVM College of Nursing and Health Sciences advisory board and helped plan and implement the Frymoyer Community Health Resource Center at Fletcher Allen Health Care.

Learn more about the Frymoyer Scholars Program at UVM.

(The College of Nursing and Health Sciences contributed information to this article.)