For some students, choosing a major can be a difficult decision. However, an event hosted by USF Health from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 4, at the USF Marshall Student Center, could help make their decision a lot easier.

USF Health’s Shared Student Services, in partnership with Health Occupation Students of America (HOSA), is hosting a symposium for undergraduate students to learn about different health professions and explore the array of programs offered at USF Health.

A USF Health student poses with USF mascot Rocky D. Bull at the 2016 USF Health Shared Student Services symposium.

“The health care symposium showcases our nationally ranked academic programs to prospective students,” said Joe Ford, assistant vice president for USF Health Shared Student Services. “This also highlights USF Health and our mission of making life better for patients and the community through top-quality education, research and clinical practice.”

Guest speaker Donna Petersen, ScD, CPH, senior associate vice president of USF Health, dean of the USF College of Public Health and interim dean of the USF College of Nursing, will discuss career opportunities in health care and how USF adapts its programs to align with the ever-changing health care field.

Advisors from all USF Health colleges will be there to answer questions about different programs offered at the Morsani College of Medicine, College of Public Health, College of Pharmacy, College of Nursing, School of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Sciences, and School of Biomedical Sciences.

The event, which includes a photo booth, breakfast and lunch, will be free to students.

To register, click here.

To read WUSF‘s news report on the symposium, click here.

Hollis Grady Boren, MD, a founding faculty member of the USF College of Medicine who served as dean of the college from 1977 to 1979, passed away April 6 at his home.

He was a pulmonologist who spent his entire career in the VA healthcare system, including appointments in Texas, Florida, Washington, DC, and Mississippi, before retiring as Chief of Staff of the VA Medical Center in Biloxi in 1989.  

Dr. Hollis Boren was dean of the USF College of Medicine from 1977 to 1979.

While working at the James A. Haley Veterans Hospital in the 1970s, Dr. Boren accepted an appointment as one of the charter faculty members in the Department of Medicine at the University of South Florida’s relatively new medical school.  He had served as an associate dean before being named dean by then USF interim president William Reece Smith, Jr., in July 1977. 

Dr. Boren guided the College of Medicine during a period of transition at the university.  During his tenure as dean, he worked with H. Lee Moffitt, then a Florida state representative, to seek support from community and medical leaders for establishing a major center on USF’s campus that would focus exclusively on cancer.

“Dr. Boren was one of our early deans instrumental in leading the momentum needed to help a young USF College of Medicine take root and thrive,” said Stephen K. Klasko, CEO of USF Health and dean of the Morsani College of Medicine.   “Leaders like him helped lay the strong academic foundation that has allowed us to build toward a new USF Health Morsani College of Medicine focused on transforming medical education with innovative programs, like SELECT and CAMLS.”

Dr. Boren was preceded in death by his wife, Lois Wriborg Boren. He is survived by his sons, Doug (Barbara) Boren, of Matthews, NC and Jay (Carol) Sloan, of Ozark, AL; daughters, Cindy (David) Berry, of Wesley Chapel, FL, Debbie (Triston) Mabry of Temple, TX, Dr. Lisa (Dr. Nanolla) Yazdani, of Byram and Elise Boren of Franklin, NC; 15 grandchildren; 29 great grandchildren and one great great-grandson.

You can view the online guest book for Dr. Boren here: http://www.legacy.com/guestbooks/tbo/guestbook.aspx?n=hollis-boren&pid=164139083&cid=full

USF Health has been at the forefront for training healthcare professionals to work in teams – from its ground-breaking coursework that combines students from medical, nursing and physical therapy programs to the newly opened Center for Advanced Medical Learning and Simulation that is training professionals from around the world.

A new program at USF Health is honing those skills further by providing case-based sessions across time, an approach that offers a more realistic view of how healthcare teams care for patients requiring multiple visits and whose care needs to be reassessed as their conditions change.

“We have worked as a collaborative Interprofessional team to develop a really robust small group case-based session,” said Dawn M. Schocken, director of the Center for Advanced Clinical Learning for the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine, which hosted the program.

“The small-group facilitation makes this a successful and terrific learning activity and a wonderful experience for our learners to learn to work as a team, before they enter the workforce.”

The IPE Educational program, which features small group sessions focused on a patient scenario, is training students from multiple educational tracts –USF Health Morsani College of Medicine, College of Nursing, College of Pharmacy, and the School of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Sciences – to work together. Student learners included fifth-semester nursing students (from the Leadership Course); doctoral students (year 2) from the School of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Sciences; second-year medical students; and doctoral student (year 2) pharmacy students. In addition, 16 faculty members from across USF Health volunteered to participate, including five faculty from College of Nursing, four faculty from College of Pharmacy, two faculty from School of Physical Therapy, and five faculty from Morsani College of Medicine.

Sessions for the program started last week and included 260 student learners. Spanning two days, students met with faculty members who facilitated discussions surrounding the care of a 65-year-old female patient recovering from a stroke and currently in a skilled nursing facility. Each student had already learned about the patient’s care from admission to the hospital with a condition called diabetic ketoacidosis through a stroke in the intensive care unit and discharge from the hospital to a skilled nursing facility.

The goal of this program was to have the students work together to develop a plan of care for the patient as she recovers from her illness, and address any concerns either she or her family have regarding her care. During the small group sessions, a standardized patient, representing the real patient’s family member, met with the student teams to discuss their concerns for their family member’s care.

The scenario will continue for the student/faculty teams in February when they will meet again to learn a new portion of the case, and then carry on their discussion to assess new needs for our ‘patient’.

Response to the team-building experience is positive, said Gail H. Schinka RN MS, clinical instructor of nursing and coordinator for the VA Nursing Academy, a partnership of the USF College of Nursing and the James A. Haley Veterans’ Hospital to expand education for nursing students and health care for veteran.

“This exercise gave all of the students some good insight into the roles of other disciplines and allowed them to explore how best to communicate with each other to drive positive patient outcomes,” Schinka said.

Student learners gain a decided advantage by training in teams, said Chiara Stetson, a fifth-semester student from the College of Nursing.

“Fostering an interdisciplinary team approach early on in healthcare education will hopefully transition to a multidisciplinary approach in treatment across the health care field,” Stetson said. “Utilizing the knowledge, skill, and expertise from multiple disciplines, with the common goal of patient-centered care, has been shown to improve patient outcomes.  Hopefully this approach can be integrated into the healthcare system in the years to come leading to increased satisfaction of both the patients and their providers. (The IPE session) was a great learning experience one that I would love to see being continued in the future.”