Texas A&M hosts second interprofessional CLARION Case Competition

Three interprofessional student teams from Texas A&M University Health Science Center presented their solutions to a real-world problem in health care during the 2019 Local CLARION Competition. The student teams presented a root cause analysis on an assigned case titled “Home is Where the Health Is.”

The winning team was comprised of Macy Anderson (College of Nursing), Travis Burdick (School of Public Health) and Soumya Pathuri (College of Medicine). The trio’s winning presentation was titled “Home Sweet, Hennepin House: A Proposed Solution to Homelessness in Hennepin County, Minnesota.”

The team advances to represent the Health Science Center at the National CLARION competition, April 12–13, at the University of Minnesota, and compete against other institutions for shared scholarships totaling $15,000.

Hosted by the Texas A&M Health Science Center Office of Interprofessional Education & Research (IPER), this competition created a fun and competitive stage to help hone interprofessional communication and problem-solving skills.

Last year’s local competition, which was the first held at Texas A&M, tasked teams with preparing a response to a case on the opioid crisis.

CLARION case competitions were created in response to issues of quality and patient safety in health care. Medical errors are the third-leading cause of death in the United States and are estimated to account for over 250,000 deaths annually. The National Academy of Medicine has cited poor communication and a lack of teamwork as contributors to these errors, and it suggested that interprofessional education is a key to reducing these deaths. This has brought interprofessional education to the forefront of health care curriculums across the nation.