International Faculty Education Scholar Award Winners

2013 Award Winners

Jules Jung

Julianna Jung, MD
Assistant Professor, Department of Emergency Medicine
Associate Director, Johns Hopkins Medicine Simulation Center

Nicole Shilkofski

Nicole Shilkofski, MD
Assistant Professor, Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine, JHUSOM
Vice Dean for Education, Purdana University Graduate School of Medicine, Malaysia
 

Project Title: Design, Implementation and Evaluation of a Novel
                         Simulation Curriculum to Target Early Childhood Mortality
                         Rates in Myanmar and Uganda: A Train-the-Trainer Model
                         Utilizing Medical Students as Peer Educators

 Abstract of Project

Early childhood mortality is a major worldwide public health issue, and one of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals is to reduce worldwide mortality rates amongst children under five years old by two thirds.  The countries of Myanmar (Burma) and Uganda have high under-five mortality rates (UFMR) and critical shortages of health care providers trained to manage seriously ill children.  The goal of this proposal is to improve the quality of basic emergency care for children in Myanmar and Uganda through the development and implementation of a sustainable simulation-based pediatric resuscitation curriculum for medical students in those countries.  This will be accomplished through a collaborative peer-education program involving students at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (JHUSOM), Perdana University Graduate School of Medicine (PUGSOM), Yangon Children’s Hospital in Myanmar, and Makerere University College of Health Sciences in Uganda.  Senior students at all four institutions will receive intensive training in core pediatric resuscitation skills, after which they will provide training for their junior counterparts in Myanmar and Uganda, with close faculty supervision and quality assurance.  The training program will be adapted from established American Heart Association (AHA) and American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) curricula, with modifications to address local epidemiology and resource constraints.  Data collection will focus on knowledge and skill assessment before and after training in order to assess efficacy of the curriculum.  In addition to fostering resuscitation competency, this program will provide opportunities for meaningful cross-cultural exchange among students, and will build participants’ skills in teaching, assessment, and educational research.  The long-range aim of this proposal is to build a novel, feasible and sustainable educational model in which students can master core resuscitation skills, and subsequently consolidate their knowledge by serving as peer educators, with the goal of developing the skills of new physicians and improving health care quality for children in Myanmar and Uganda.  If successful, this model could be applied to other healthcare worker groups, including nurses, midwives, and traditional birth attendants, ultimately decreasing UFMR and improving population health outcomes.