Past Fellows and Projects

2023-2024 Fellowship Recipients

Leon Walthall, M.D., proposed a project to enhance interprofessional collaboration in an on-going quality improvement project to foster in-patient mobility. Dr. Walthall worked with an interprofessional team to develop a curriculum for interprofessional students, including nursing, physical therapy, occupational therapy, medicine, public health, physician assistant, nurse practitioner and pharmacy to gain clinical experience on the inpatient wards mobilizing patients, with the incumbent interprofessional communication that comes from entering a hospital and attempting patient care. Through the course, students will experience the health care system and begin to gain an understanding of systems-based care.

Katherine Chike-Harris, DNP, proposed to expand a simulated synchronous telehealth activity to encompass all 6 MUSC colleges. Collaboration from college leaders and faculty members and other campus professionals contributed to the development of case scenarios that not only expose the students to the roles of various health professions, but also provides them with a safe environment to identify personal biases and optimize care for marginalized populations. Interprofessional students will participate in IP teams in a simulated synchronous telehealth visit using telehealth equipment that enables the team to perform a physical exam and develop an IP plan of care remotely. Students will then participate in debriefing sessions with the standardized patient and individual/group interviews with faculty to collect qualitative data regarding the experience. The short-term goals are to expose the students to working in an IP team and appreciate the full capabilities of telehealth. The long-term goal is for students to understand and appreciate the roles of each healthcare member to facilitate future IP collaborations and become comfortable with and willing to use telehealth within their future careers.

2022-2023 Fellowship Recipients

Hannah Espeleta, Ph.D., took a lead role on a qualitative project to develop novel informatic approaches for interdisciplinary care settings. Dr. Espeleta's fellowship built upon existing relationships to form a new interprofessional collaborative team between MUSC's College of Nursing, and the College of Medicine's Biomedical Informatics Center (BMIC), Department of Pediatrics, and the Department of Psychiatry's National Crime Victims Center (NCVC). This large, interprofessional team joins four separate departments in a critical public health initiative to enhance automated clinical tools that have the potential to make significant impact addressing risk for child abuse and neglect in primary care.

2021-2022 Fellowship Recipient

Ashley Bondurant, DPT, MEd, developed and implemented an interprofessional pediatric clinic that serves children on the MUSC pediatric out-patient therapy waiting list. Current data suggests that early pediatric clinical opportunities during the didactic educational phase of allied health professions academic programming would not only enhance learning but also promote higher pediatric clinical skill development as students apply and enter pediatric clinical practicums. Additionally, children seeking therapy services in the Charleston and surrounding Tri-county area often remain on a waiting list for 8-12 weeks. The goals of Dr. Bondurant's fellowship were to develop and evaluate the effectiveness of a complementary interprofessional pediatric clinic that serves children on the MUSC pediatric out-patient therapy waiting list, thereby increasing access to care, while simultaneously developing students' skills and knowledge related to pediatric care and interprofessional collaborative practice for this patient population.

Pinar Emecen-Huja, D.D.S., Ph.D., developed an interprofessional applied experience for learners in the periodontics and family medicine graduate programs. The aim of the experience was to address the complex bi-directionality of oral health and diabetes-related outcomes, with emphasis placed on integrating oral health into comprehensive chronic disease management, facilitating collaborative referral management, and measuring care quality and clinical outcomes.

2020-2021 Fellowship Recipients

Rupak Mukherjee, Ph.D., developed an interprofessional short course that included students and faculty from across the enterprise to reinforce the interprofessional nature of efficient patient care. The course was designed to allow the participants to participate in a more interactive manner with medical students and help students appreciate the varied role many healthcare professionals play in the care and treatment of the patients they encounter during the clinical phase of their education.

Amy Smith, MSN, created an interprofessional high-fidelity simulation scenario involving caring for patients at end-of-life that will be incorporated into a new IP elective course.

2019-2020 Fellowship Recipient

Corrie Scharrenberg, MSN AGNP, believes that reducing sepsis mortality and improving outcomes is a team sport. Interprofessional collaboration is an essential part to program development, successful implementation and sustainability. She spent her fellowship year working to combine the benefits of technology and the adoption of the TeamSTEPPS huddle philosophy within the Sepsis Workup and Treatment Program (SWAT) at MUSC. She believes that the union of these two methods will lower the threshold for suspicion of sepsis at a critical decision point during our patients' care.

2018-2019 Fellowship Recipients

Ragan A. DuBose-Morris, Ph.D., spent her fellowship year seeking to accelerate the training of students in telehealth teamwork as part of their current degree programs. Over the course of the fellowship, she shared lessons learned from MUSC interprofessional training development statewide and nationally. Her goal is to continue to inspire other faculty and staff to use models of interprofessional education to address quality, process, and outcomes improvement in healthcare. View Dr.DuBose-Morris' fellowship year activities.

Joni D. Nelson, Ph.D. strengthened her knowledge and expertise in interprofessional health practices for advancing team-based approaches to deliver culturally competent care in both primary and dental care settings. She developed an efficacy-building training that promotes oral health interprofessionalism practices and prepares students and faculty across all college disciplines (Pharmacy, Medicine, Dental Medicine, Health Professions, and Nursing) to deliver culturally competent care in both primary and dental care settings.

2017-2018 Fellowship Recipients

Benjamin C. Kalivas, M.D. plans to enhance his skills in working with IP teams in day-to-day clinical practice. He hopes to develop a lasting IP approach to the management of delirium and plans to begin prevention and treatment trials in collaboration with IP teams. He will also develop and produce family and patient awareness information, pamphlets and/or videos and organize a hospital wide awareness event along with other patient safety week events in March 2018.

Gweneth B. Lazenby, M.D. wants to cultivate the leadership skills necessary to develop efficient and effective IP teams within the Women and Children's ICCE. Her overarching goals include the creation of IP teams that will determine common patient care, education and research goals. These teams will collaborate to develop quality improvement programs/strategies to achieve the identified goals.

2016-2017 Fellowship Recipients

Anita Ramsetty, M.D. spent her year as a Maralynne D. Mitcham fellow "in defense of food for patients, student learning, and professional development". She used her funding for professional development completed over 50% of the requirements necessary to take the Certified Culinary Medicine Specialist examination. Dr. Ramsetty focused on developing and IP elective (IP 700) Caring for the Community: Focus on Food which was launched in the fall 2016. The course was nominated for the 2017 SC Commission on Higher Education Service Learning Award which recognizes exemplary service learning contributions made by the students of South Carolina's public and private colleges and universities. During her fellowship year, Dr. Ramsetty attended at an IPE conference at the Jefferson Center in Philadelphia. She served as an IP facilitator for the MUSC required IP 710 course and was recognized by the students as one of the 2016 Outstanding Small Group Facilitators.

Eva Serber, Ph.D. devoted her year as a Maralynne D. Mitcham fellow to the integration of Behavioral Medicine into Cardiopulmonary Rehabilitation and began working a half day per week in this clinic starting in December 2016. She hopes to incorporate training for psychology interns in near future. Dr. Serber used her fellowship funding to join the American Association of Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Rehabilitation and attend the 2016 Annual Conference. She joined the AACPR Task Force for Outcomes Measures and is an invited speaker and will lead a breakout session at the 2017 Annual Conference on "Anxiety in Your Cardiac Rehabilitation Patients with and without Devices. Dr. Serber served as an IP facilitator for IP 710 in Spring 2016 and provided interested health professions students the opportunity to join her in attendance at a MUSC Heart Transplant Selection Committee meetings.