Skip to contents
In This Issue:
Clinicians at the Hopi Health Care Center in rural Arizona soon may sit in on BWH Grand Rounds. Thanks to a federal grant from Indian Health Services, BWH's Institute for International Emergency Medicine and Health (IEMH) in the Department of Emergency Medicine and the Hopi Health Care Center will have teleconferencing equipment to enable web-based education and training from Francis Street to the Hopi Reservation in Arizona.
The installation of the technology comes on the heels IEMH sponsoring a two-day emergency medicine “train the trainer” session at the Hopi Reservation in July.
“We're hopeful that this relationship of broad but direct educational support will serve as a model for rural health care and emergency medicine,” said Mark A. Davis, MD, MS, director of IEMH.
During the July 6 and 7 training session, Davis, Charles Pozner, MD, medical director of BWH's STRATUS Center for Medical Simulation, and Scott Votey, MD, an emergency medicine physician at UCLA and Associate Dean for Graduate Medical Education, provided Hopi clinicians with instruction and training on techniques for airway management, conscious sedation, trauma management and rhythm disturbances. The Hopi clinicians who participated in the training can now train their colleagues.
“This is one of the most rural areas in America, and instances of high-risk trauma are few and far between. That makes routine education and training for emergency care even more crucial,” said Davis, who along with obstetrician/gynecologist James Zuckerman, MD, continues to develop the IEMH relationship. Zuckerman has been working with the Hopi Indians and the Indian Health Service for many years. Other Boston and Harvard-based collaborations are also working with the Hopi Indians on a full range of health improvement initiatives.
Davis said BWH and Hopi clinicians soon will connect through videoconferencing rooms and desktop computers in order to build on the foundation of this summer's “train the trainer” sessions. “We'll be able to review and help them practice emergency procedures, and they'll be able to join us for teaching events like Grand Rounds,” Davis said. “In the process, they will continue to teach us about delivery of quality care in the rural environment.”