Paul Tran’s dream continues to blossom.
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T. Paul Tran, M.D. |
Tran, an M.D. and research director in the emergency medicine department at UNMC, planned to return to his native Vietnam to teach the U.S. approach to graduate medical education. He was going to help improve patient care in the region where he was born.
After his untimely death in 2012, a team of emergency medicine physicians and staff members travelled to Vietnam to institute his project. Now staff members are building on the success of that visit with a return trip this year to introduce the concept of team dynamics in emergency medicine.
In the first visit, the team worked mainly on didactic skills, including emergency techniques such as splinting, said Wes Zeger, D.O. But the group also saw an opportunity for an improvement in team dynamics.
Meet the team
Grant Awardees:
- Primary Investigator: Wesley Zeger, D.O.
- Co-investigator: Thang Nguyen
- Co-investigator: Michael Wadman, M.D.
- Chad Branecki, M.D.
- Vince Morris
Staff Traveling to Vietnam:
- Wesley Zeger, D.O.
- Thang Nguyen
- Chad Branecki, M.D.
- Vince Morris
- Claudia Barthold, M.D.
- Kathy Morris, D.N.P.
- Dorothy Habrat, D.O., house officer
Collaborators on grant include:
- Robert Muelleman, M.D., emergency medicine department chair
- Laura Robinson, emergency medicine department administrator
- Alisa Seidler
Next month, the group will return to Vietnam to elaborate on this concept by applying it to practice in simulation training models. Medical students and nursing students will be placed in simulated clinical scenarios together to test their understanding of the concept. After each onsite visit, UNMC emergency medicine staff will host teleconference sessions as an ongoing collaboration between UNMC and Thai Binh Medical University.
“At UNMC, we think team dynamics is important in patient care, we emphasize it,” Dr. Zeger said. “Over there, as we observed patient flow and management, we weren’t sure about how efficiently communication worked between different health care providers, such as physicians and nurses.
“They certainly communicate well in many aspects, but we thought there could be contributions to the teamwork paradigm.”
For example, there is a hierarchal aspect to the physician-nurse relationship, while the team concept is more “circular,” Dr. Zeger said.
The UNMC group introduced the concept by hosting two concurrent courses for medical students and nursing students at Hanoi Medical University and Thai Binh Medical University during the 2015 trip.
“One of the benefits of the team model is that a lot more communication goes on. With shared ideas and input, and understanding the common destination for the patient, care becomes more efficient and there are fewer errors.”
Dr. Zeger said that even as the Vietnam collaboration grows, including with a new grant (see sidebar), Dr. Tran’s memory continues to drive his colleagues’ efforts.
“He’s a major part of the reason we’re continuing to go back,” Dr. Zeger said.