Each day, 100 patients die in U.S. hospitals due to injuries sustained from flawed medical care.
Now, three Penn students who took a course last year about preventable medical mistakes and how they can be reduced have been honored for their work.
College seniors Maryellen Guinan and Ashley O'Malley and 2005 graduate Jessica Uitto presented their projects along with Medical School residents and fellows at the School of Medicine's Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation's fifth annual Research Day.
The three were students in "Adverse Events in Health Care," a course taught by Maryanne McGuckin, a senior research investigator and professor in Penn's School of Medicine.
The three students had already had great success with their projects, as Guinan's group was awarded a Nassau Grant and Uitto and O'Malley both won the Rose Award. The awards are given to Penn undergraduate students, providing them with funding for future research projects.
Feeling that the students would benefit most from "hands-on" learning that would help bring the knowledge attained in the class "to the next level," McGuckin required the students to conduct quantitative research projects. The projects were presented and evaluated by a panel of health-care professionals at the Research Day created specifically for the class.
McGuckin did not protect students from the grim realities of medical malpractice. On the first day of class she brought in two patients who sustained serious injuries from flawed health care. One had had both legs amputated after a misdiagnosis and the other suffered from a serious infection after bypass surgery.
A wide array of students, many of whom McGuckin said "brought their own baggage" as pre-med, pre-law and nursing students, took the class. McGuckin chose to start the class off on a serious note to show the importance of having different professionals work together to solve health-care problems.
The students designed their own projects with the aim of ameliorating health-care problems that they identified in class.
"I really like research as part of a class because it's rare. I like hands-on [work] ? the opportunity to apply knowledge and not to just regurgitate what we learned," Guinan said.
Guinan and her partners, Engineering senior Lauren O'Neill and post-baccalaureate students Annie Fu and Rebecca Tsang, explored the public's feelings about infection rates before entering hospitals and when signing consent forms.
"We found that the public is more concerned about insurance [before] they're in the hospital. Once they're in the hospital their main concern is infection rates. That should be their main reason for choosing a hospital," Guinan said.
The group concluded that there is a dire need for consumer education regarding infection rates.
Uitto and O'Malley observed patients' behaviors when picking up prescriptions at pharmacies, noting several factors, including whether the patients checked to make sure that they had the proper medication.
Uitto and O'Malley found that most patients did not check their prescriptions.
"It's really easy to take an active role to prevent these errors," O'Malley said.
"We came up with ideas that pharmacies and consumers could do to become more involved in their healthcare," she added. Uitto added that one in 20 prescriptions is not filled correctly.
Next week Uitto and Guinan will present their projects at the Association for Professionals in Infection Control's conference in Baltimore.
This article ran in the June 23, 255 edition ofThe Summer Pennsylvanian.
