UF team wins national interprofessional student case competition

The 2016 UF CLARION team Karen Restrepo, Jordan Mullings and Carolina De La Rosa Mateo.
The 2016 UF CLARION team Karen Restrepo, Jordan Mullings and Carolina De La Rosa Mateo.

A University of Florida team earned first place at the national CLARION competition held April 16 in Minneapolis.

The CLARION competition asks teams of students from different disciplines to work together to analyze a complex health care case and create a root cause analysis. UF’s team was composed of Carolina De La Rosa Mateo, a bachelor’s of health science student in the College of Public Health and Health Professions, Jordan Mullings, a master’s in business administration student in the Warrington College of Business, and Karen Restrepo, a PHHP master’s in public health student. Erik Black, Ph.D., an assistant professor of pediatrics in the College of Medicine and assistant director of the UF Health Office of Interprofessional Education, served as the team’s faculty adviser.

“This team worked very hard to present a thoughtful and innovative analysis and we are so proud of them,” said Amy Blue, Ph.D., the associate vice president for interprofessional education at UF Health and PHHP’s associate dean for educational affairs. “Programs that teach students from across disciplines to come together to communicate and work together to solve health problems are imperative for improving patient outcomes and safety.”

The UF team was one of 16 to compete for the $7,500 first prize at this year’s competition, which is sponsored by CLARION, a student-driven, staff/faculty-advised committee developed by the University of Minnesota’s Center for Health Interprofessional Programs Student Center. The competition promotes interprofessional communication as a way to combat medical errors and improve health care.

“This experience allowed me to apply my skills learned in the classroom to a current, complex health care issue,” Restrepo said. “It was a humbling experience to realize there is not always a single, clear solution in health care. It was also a motivating experience to see so many current and future health care professionals involved in the competition.”

The 2016 case competition charged teams with creating a vision for enhancing the process of care for Native American populations by involving local and regional institutions and community resources in an integrated plan that uses best practices in interprofessional teamwork. A panel of judges evaluated teams’ analyses in the context of real world standards of practice.

“When we presented in front of the judges, I was so incredibly proud of the three of us because it was by far the best we had done, better than any of our practice sessions,” De La Rosa Mateo said. “The judges said that we were the first team that day they had seen that they could not give constructive criticism to and I think that spoke volumes about the quality of our performance.”

Before participating at the national competition, the UF team won the UF-level CLARION competition, sponsored by the UF Health Office of Interprofessional Education. The team members had never worked together before, said De La Rosa Mateo, and each member brought a unique perspective.

“I would not have imagined that we would have won the UF competition, and certainly not the national competition, so I am incredibly grateful that we were brought together and were able to accomplish so much,” De La Rosa Mateo said.