Photo By Rebecca Perron | 170325-N-GM597-058 Portsmouth, Va. (March 25, 2017) Lt. Cmdr. Mike Mattingly, a...... read more read more
The Department of Pediatrics at Naval Medical Center Portsmouth (NMCP) hosted their inaugural Tidewater Military Pediatric Symposium March 25 with nearly 100 pediatric health care providers from the Tidewater enhanced Multi-Service Market (eMSM) participating.
The Tidewater eMSM includes NMCP and its branch health clinics, and U.S. Air Force Hospital Langley and McDonald Army Health Center at Joint Base Langley-Eustis. The health care providers included pediatric and family medicine physicians, nurses and nurse practitioners, as well as multidisciplinary care team members, such as pharmacists and case managers.
“The goal is to open the lines of communication between those who are caring for our military pediatric beneficiaries out at the clinics and help put them in touch with Portsmouth as a medical pediatric subspecialty medical home,” said Lt. Cmdr. Shannon Marchegiani, neonatologist and one of six-member planning committee.
“All of the sessions today are geared toward pediatric and family medicine providers, nurses and multidisciplinary care team members to provide them these tools so when they are at the smaller clinics and don’t have the specialists down the hall from them, they have more information or know they can reach out to us,” Marchegiani said. “We’ve included contact information for our staff at NMCP and also some quality improvement initiatives.”
Ahead of the symposium, the planning committee contacted clinic managers throughout the region to solicit input on which topics they would like receive education and designed the sessions based on this feedback, as well as a similar symposium Marchegiani had helped facilitate in Maryland.
The three morning sessions were hour-long lectures that featured a variety of topics.
“We’ve had an ENT potpourri of topics, as well as common potty problems and voiding dysfunctions,” Marchegiani said. “Our keynote speaker was retired Capt. Timothy Shope, who had been the pediatrics program director here, and he talked about common infectious diseases in children and when children should be allowed to return to daycare and school. He is highly published in terms of what those guidelines are.”
“Infectious disease is a topic I have most consistently been involved with in my professional career,” said retired Capt. Timothy Shope. “The people in the room are providers of health care to children, and so, I want to demystify the process of keeping kids safe and healthy, but ask them to be rational about when they say children can and can’t attend school and daycare. Ultimately, it affects when the parent can and can’t work. In the military, we have employer-sponsored health care available, so it’s important that we keep the kids in care when that is appropriate so readiness for that military parent is higher.”
The afternoon session included four small-group sessions that were designed around individual cases. According to Marchegiani, through these sessions, the goal is to help improve the care that is provided and practice as one big family to better the care that patients receive.
“The sessions contain cases that might be seen in clinic with examples,” Marchegiani said. “These sessions are shorter and more question-and-answer focused, with smaller groups of 20 to 30 facilitated by pediatric subspecialists. Topics included heart murmurs, early evaluation of autism, food allergies and common infectious diseases that continually reoccur with an individual. We had six topics that repeated twice, so attendees could catch four of the six topics.”
The symposium was well received by those who attended.
“I was able to get updates on current guidelines for practice management for different diseases, from ENT to urology to infectious disease, which will be helpful to my everyday practice,” said Lisa McCain-Johnson, a general pediatrician from the McDonald Army Health Center at Joint Base-Eustis. “I enjoy learning and keeping my skills up, and in addition I like being able to meet other pediatricians in the area and meet the specialists. The huge benefit from today was meeting other pediatricians who are in the community working with you to build some cohesion. It’s nice that we got to meet some of the specialist that we’ve talked to on the phone.”
| Date Taken: | 03.25.2017 |
| Date Posted: | 04.04.2017 10:24 |
| Story ID: | 229097 |
| Location: | PORTSMOUTH, VIRGINIA, US |
| Web Views: | 60 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, NMCP Hosts Inaugural Tidewater Military Pediatric Symposium, by Rebecca Perron, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
No keywords found.
