Program Description and Hubs of Scholarly Excellence

A. Immune Function, Ischemia/Reperfusion and Organ Dysfunction: Senior Mentor (Ed Sherwood)

The Sherwood Lab aims to better understand and treat critical illness such as sepsis and severe infection. We study the innate immune system both in vivo and in vitro in order to discover novel approaches to modulate the immune system and improve patient outcomes.

1. Immune Function/Ischemia-Reperfusion and Sepsis/Organ Failure
The focus of research is to understand the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying organ injury following ischemia-reperfusion and sepsis and to develop approaches to minimize injury with an emphasis on immunomodulation. Studies primarily employ small animal models (mice) and ex vivo study of peripheral blood leukocytes obtained from surgical and critically ill patients.

•  Mentor (Tony Hernandez)
  • Mentees

2. Immune Function and Sepsis
Research focuses on augmenting the host response to infection in patients with severe burns and other critical injuries. Our studies seek to understand how critical illness causes immune dysfunction and increased susceptibility to infection and to develop new approaches to decrease the incidence and severity of infection with a focus on immunomodulation. We primarily employ small animal models (mice) and ex vivo study of peripheral blood leukocytes obtained from critically ill patients, particularly those with severe burn injury.

• Mentor (Julie Bohannon)
  • Mentees

B. Cardiac Ischemia/Reperfusion- Senior Mentor (Matt Riess)

3. In-vivo Models of Cardiac Arrest and CPR
Our laboratory investigates novel strategies such as ischemic and pharmacologic (pre- and post-) conditioning to improve neurological outcome and survival after cardiac arrest (CA) and cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). Currently, with only a five to seven percent survival rate after out-of-hospital CA, ground-breaking findings from an inter-institutional and -disciplinary collaboration are highly promising for thousands of patients each year. We use an in-vivo rat model, in which rates are anesthetized and instrumented. We induce CA by electrical fibrillation or asphyxia, start mechanical CPR with a custom-made machine and defibrillate if indicated to achieve return of spontaneous circulation. In non-survival experiments, rats are euthanized after 4 hrs to harvest and examine vital organs including heart, brain, lung, kidneys etc. In survival experiments, rats will be weaned from anesthesia, extubated and kept in the animal facility for up to 7 days; pre- and post-CA behavioral experiments, in conjunction with an implanted EEG recorder, offer state-of-the-art assessments of neurological function before and after CA & CPR in the absence vs presence of cardio- and neuroprotective strategies. We are also interested in the effect of common comorbidities on outcome after CA & CPR, such as diabetes, hyperlipidemia, hypertension, obesity etc. and their respective treatments. We use a diabetic rat model to study these interactions.
Protective pharmacological interventions include, but are not limited to, ventilation with noble gases and the administration of cell membrane stabilizers. For the production of custom-designed compounds, we collaborate with the Department of Biomedical Engineering at VU.

• Mentor (Matt Riess)
  • Mentees:

4. In-vivo Models of Shock
We have developed an in-vivo rat model of hemorrhagic shock to develop new ways to not only improve organ function and survival after a given amount of blood loss and time until volume resuscitation, but also to be able to extend the so-called golden hour until definitive volume resuscitation. The cell membrane stabilizers we also use in our CA & CPR model have produced promising preliminary results. For the production of custom-designed compounds, we collaborate with the Department of Biomedical Engineering at VU. Hemorrhagic shock is also one of several ways in addition to septic shock and asphyxia to produce right heart failure which we use to assess the value of the novel Peripheral Intravenous Analysis (PIVA) in comparison to echocardiography. This model also offers the opportunity to conduct research experiments with extra-corporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) in a controlled research setting.

• Mentor (Susan Eagle)
  • Mentees:

5. Myocardial Ischemia/Reperfusion Injury (in vitro models of simulated myocardial and neuronal injury; Fatty acid metabolism in a hibernation model) Ex-vivo and in-vitro Models of Ischemia/Reperfusion Injury
Complementing our in-vivo models of global ischemia, we also have ex-vivo models of isolated but intact hearts and lungs to assess their individual roles in diseases such as myocardial infarction or CA & CPR. The same protective strategies, i.e. ischemic or pharmacologic conditioning, are applied. At an even more basic level, we conduct cell culture experiments with isolated cardiomyocytes, neurons and endothelial cells exposed to hypoxia and reoxygenation to mimic the effects of ischemia and reperfusion in individual cell types and to study their respective roles in organ-protective strategies.

• Mentor (Matt Riess)
  • Mentees

C. Biomarkers/Mechanisms of Organ Injury- Senior Mentor (Josh Billings)

The Billings lab group focuses on elucidating mechanisms of surgery-induced organ injury and developing new therapy for perioperative organ injury in humans. Research methods include interventional clinical trials, prospective cohort studies, and analyses of large datasets. Translational research includes ex vivo measurements and experiments on blood, urine, DNA, myocardium, aorta, arterioles, and mediastinal fat. The group is currently studying effects of perioperative patient hyperoxygenation, perioperative oxidative damage, and vascular function on kidney, brain, and heart injury.

6. Vascular Function and Organ Injury
Investigations focused on the effects of vascular function including vascular reactivity, coagulation, and immune response activation on perioperative organ injury. We measure functional assessments of the endothelium in patients, vasodilator function in isolated blood vessels, and oxidation-induced changes in these responses with the goal of identifying interventions to improve vascular function and reduce perioperative organ injury.

• Mentor (Marc Lopez)
  • Mentees

7. HDL Cholesterol and Organ Injury
Our laboratory goal is to utilize bench-to-bedside research to develop novel interventions to prevent or diminish organ injury after surgery. We are currently focused on kidney dysfunction (AKI) after cardiac and vascular surgery.  We are investigating the role of high-density lipoproteins (HDL) in the prevention of postoperative organ injury, and have found that patients with a higher preoperative HDL concentration have less AKI after cardiac surgery, and that perioperative statin administration strengthens this relationship. We are characterizing the anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant capacities of patients’ HDL and assessing the association between these characteristics and postoperative AKI development. We also have a clinical study underway investigating HDL microRNA transport and delivery during the perioperative period and the association of HDL-mediated miRNA signaling with postoperative organ injury.

• Mentor (Loren Smith)
  • Mentees

D. Potassium Channel Pharmacology and Physiology- Senior Mentor (Denton)

Work in the Denton lab is focused on early stage drug discovery and target validation for ion channels implicated in various disease processes. We use a combination of patch clamp electrophysiology, molecular biology, high-throughput screening, molecular modeling, and in vivo animal model testing to evaluate the therapeutic potential of potassium and chloride channels.  

8. Renal Kir Channels
Inward rectifier potassium (Kir) channels Kir1.1, Kir4.1, Kir4.1/5.1, and Kir7.1 play key roles in regulating salt and water transport in the kidney and might represent novel drug targets for hypertension and other renal tubulopathies. Research efforts on these projects are aimed at developing first-in-class small-molecule modulators for evaluating the therapeutic potential of these and other ion channels in the kidney.

• Mentor (Samantha McClenahan)
  • Mentees

9. Slo3 potassium channels as drug targets for non-hormonal male and female contraceptives
This newly funded project is aimed at developing first-in-class inhibitors of a sperm-specific potassium channel termed Slo3. High-throughput screening, medicinal chemistry, and patch clamp electrophysiology are used to develop potent and specific inhibitors of this channel for in vitro and in vivo testing through collaboration with Washington University in St. Louis. 

• Mentor (Roman Lazarenko)
  • Mentees

10. Pancreatic Kir Channels
Pancreatic and Vascular KATP Channels - ATP-regulated potassium channels comprised of pore-forming Kir channels and regulatory sulfonylurea receptor subunits play key roles in pancreatic beta cells and brain (Kir6.2/SUR1) and vasculature (Kir6.1/SUR2B). These projects employ HTS, patch clamp electrophysiology, and in vitro and in vivo testing to evaluate the therapeutic potential of these channels in diabetes, various neurological disorders, and vascular diseases. 

• Mentor (McClenahan/Lazarenko)
  • Mentees

E. Brain Dysfunction and Survivorship: Senior Mentor (Pratik Pandharipande)

Critically ill patients suffer from delirium, a manifestation of brain organ dysfunction during hospitalization, and go on to have cognitive impairment, functional decline and neuropsychological sequelae that threaten their quality of life.

11. Postoperative Delirium, Cognitive and Functional Impairment
Postoperative delirium occurs in up to 50% of patients after major surgery and is associated with adverse outcomes, including increased hospital length of stay, higher cost of care, higher rates of institutionalization after discharge, and higher rates of readmission. Furthermore, it is associated with functional decline and cognitive impairments after surgery. Our group studies the epidemiology and mechanisms underlying these and designs interventional trials targeting modifiable risk factors to improve patient outcomes.

• Mentor (Chris Hughes)
  • Mentees

12. ICU Delirium, Cognitive and Functional Decline
Our group studies the epidemiology and mechanisms underlying delirium, and cognitive and functional impairments, and designs interventional trials targeting modifiable risk factors to improve patient outcomes.

• Mentor (Hughes/Pandharipande)
  • Mentees

13. Pediatric sedation, delirium and mobility
Delirium occurs in 30-50% of neonates and children and is associated with increased morbidity and mortality. Our group has developed and validated delirium-screening instruments, and then studied the epidemiology of delirium in children. Ongoing studies are evaluating long-term outcomes after delirium and designing interventional trials targeting modifiable risk factors to improve patient outcomes.

• Mentor (Heidi Smith)
  • Mentees

14. Critical illness and pain
Research is focused on examining the relationship between critical illness and survivorship, especially chronic pain. In this burgeoning field, we are exploring the incidence of pain, types of pain, and mitigating factors that can lead to, or alleviate, chronic pain after critical illness.

• Mentor (Hayhurst)
  • Mentees

F. Acute Pain management: Senior Mentor (Raj Gupta)

15. Regional anesthesia techniques and outcomes
There are always new regional anesthesia techniques discussed amongst experts and in the literature (e.g. erector spinae blocks).  Within this group, we want to focus on how to implement these new techniques into a robust clinical practice, develop educational efforts for trainees of all levels, and formulate research projects that measure the patient-based outcomes of the new techniques versus the current standard.

• Mentor (Gupta)
  • Mentees

16. Regional anesthesia techniques for Breast Surgery (TRAM, PEC)
Within this group, we want to focus on how to implement new regional techniques into a robust clinical practice, develop educational efforts for trainees of all levels, and formulate research projects that measure the patient-based outcomes of the new techniques versus the current standard.

• Mentor (Bansal)
  • Mentees

17. Decision Support and Apps in Regional anesthesia
Within this hub we would like to focus on decision support tools that allow clinicians to deliver care based on guidelines and best practices. Projects within this group will be centered on developing the tools, evaluating their utility in clinical practice, and measuring outcomes against the guideline itself and in terms of Patient Reported Outcomes (PROs).

• Mentor (Allen)
  • Mentees

G. Chronic Pain management (David Edwards)

18. Pain, Opioids and Policy (and Legal Implications)
The group studies the epidemiology of the opioid epidemic as measured through big data including from the departments of health. The effect of state laws on prescribing and opioid-related deaths is an outcome of interest in their research.

• Mentor (David Edwards)
  • Mentees

19. Neuromodulation in Chronic Pain
This hub seeks to develop and study techniques such as dorsal column, dorsal root ganglion, peripheral nerve and field stimulation and expand the specialty through innovative techniques and novel applications.

• Mentor (Sobey)
  • Mentees

20. Treatment of Chronic Knee Pain
Although chronic knee pain is a very common and debilitating condition in the aging population, it is often quite difficult to treat. My research focuses on conducting clinical trials to explore interventional approaches to determine the most efficacious treatment modality. Currently, our clinical trial is aimed at examining the efficacy of genicular nerve radiofrequency ablation for chronic knee pain.

• Mentor (Puneet Misra)
  • Mentees

H. Optimizing Clinical Outcomes in Adult Perioperative Patients I: Senior Mentor (Matt McEvoy)

21. Enhanced Recovery Pathways After Surgery
Perioperative medicine comprises the non-surgical care of patients from the time that surgery is first considered, through the perioperative period and on to full recovery. Scholarly activities in this affinity group encompass myriad surgical service lines (e.g. surgical oncology, colorectal surgery, neurosurgery, bariatric surgery etc.) and target improvement in the preoperative, intraoperative and postoperative periods (e.g., pre-habilitation or risk profiling and modification, monitoring, and/or care optimization on the wards) with longitudinal outcomes tracked after PACU discharge or discharge to home.

• Mentor (Matt McEvoy)
  • Mentees
• Mentor (Letha Mathews)
  • Mentees

I. Optimizing Clinical Outcomes in Adult Perioperative Patients II: Senior Mentor (David Mcilroy)

22. Improving Outcomes in in Women's Health
Women's physiological and psychological states impact their health outcomes in unique ways. Clinical trials involving health initiatives in obstetrics, gynecology, and other clinical settings exploring the impact of systems, techniques, medications, or other interventions on women's health outcomes are included in this category.

• Mentor (J Bauchat)
  • Mentees
• Mentor (David Chestnut)
  • Mentees

23. Perioperative Outcomes After Cardiac Surgery
Cardiac surgery is common and associated with a significant incidence of complications that adversely impact patient recovery. Through a multi-faceted program we are seeking to characterize modifiable and potentially causal perioperative factors for adverse outcomes in patients undergoing cardiac surgery, leading to clinical trials of interventions that may improve outcomes in these at-risk patients.

• Mentor (Billings)
  • Mentees
• Mentor (Mias Pretorius)
  • Mentees
• Mentor (McIlroy)
  • Mentees

J. Optimizing Clinical Outcomes in Pediatric Patients: Senior Mentor (Sri Reddy/Brian Donahue)

24. Craniofacial Surgery
Our group’s clinical research interest is in optimizing the perioperative care and outcomes for pediatric patients with craniosynostosis undergoing craniofacial surgery.  More specifically, the research focuses on perioperative blood management, blood conservation techniques, and blood loss/volume assessment in this vulnerable patient population.

• Mentor (Sri Reddy)
  • Mentees

25. Perioperative QI/Airway
The focus of the perioperative quality improvement mentorship hub is to provide guidance and mentorship for projects that aim to improve the pediatric perioperative experience through enhanced recovery, safety, and efficiency.  This area encompasses a wide range of quality improvement opportunities that may address systems based initiatives as well as direct patient care initiatives through the utilization of quality improvement methodology.

• Mentor (Menser)
  • Mentees

26. Quality Improvement and Decreasing distractions during anesthesia care
The focus of this hub is in Improvement Science/Quality Improvement Projects with a focus on decreasing distractions during critical periods of anesthesia care in addition to other perioperative time periods.

• Mentor (Crockett)
  • Mentees

27. Perioperative Outcomes After Pediatric Cardiac Surgery
This hub has an interest in identification and characterization of risk factors associated with relevant outcomes in pediatric cardiac surgery and implementation of methods to improve outcomes in pediatric cardiac surgery.  An additional interest is in development and implementation of evidence-based, laboratory-guided transfusion algorithms.

• Mentor (Donahue)
  • Mentees

K. Personalized Medicine- Senior Mentor (Stephen Bruehl)

28. Perioperative genomics and personalized medicine
Develop a perioperative precision medicine program by identifying priority fields (pain, PONV, atrial fibrillation, anticoagulation), coordination of building a pipeline of using genetic and clinical information into electronic health record-based best practice advisories, identify and understand barriers of implementation.

• Mentor (Miklos Kertai)
  • Mentees

29. Burnout in Health Care Providers
Burnout can lead to health and psychological problems and is apparently increasing in physicians and nurses. This hub seeks to identify risk factors and study interventions to reduce burnout among providers

• Mentor (Steven Hyman)
  • Mentees

30. Psychology and Pain
This work covers the broad area of acute and chronic pain and focuses on understanding pain mechanisms and biopsychosocial factors that modulate pain and responses to pain interventions (including opioids and nonpharmacological interventions).

• Mentor (Amanda Stone/Steven Bruehl)
  • Mentees

L. Education Research- Senior Mentor (Matt McEvoy/Mark Newton)

31. Decision Support in Anesthesiology Practice
Within this hub we would like to focus on decision support tools that allow clinicians to deliver care based on guidelines and best practices. Projects within this group will be centered on developing the tools, evaluating their utility in clinical practice, and measuring outcomes against the guideline itself and in terms of Patient Reported Outcomes (PROs).

• Mentor (Raj Gupta)
  • Mentees

32. Spaced Education/Best-Practice Pedagogical Approaches
The emphasis of this hub is best-practice pedagogical approaches and innovative curriculum design.  Projects focus on variety of educational topics, with learner-initiated feedback, spaced learning, and the use of educational frameworks in curriculum development as examples.  Another area of mentorship is the development of skills as a question writer for CME activities, such as the ASA-sponsored SEE publication or MOCA Minute.

• Mentor (Amy Robertson)
  • Mentees

33. Evaluation Processes
Evaluation processes can be challenging in that they must be specific to encompass a wide range of learner groups and levels of expertise, but the form must all be succinct in order to facilitate responsiveness.  This hubs interest focuses on creating evaluation forms using the anesthesia milestones, assessing trainee competency but also evaluation efficiency and conciseness.

• Mentor (Elizabeth Hughes)
  • Mentees

34. Global Health Education and Research
The Global Health Education and Research hub encompasses clinical research, training and curriculum development, and health policy projects with a focus on initiatives that improve access to and quality of surgery and anesthesia care worldwide. Partners in Kenya, Ethiopia, Liberia, Guatemala and elsewhere as well as colleagues within the Vanderbilt Institute aid these efforts for Global Health and other VUMC departments.

• Mentor (Ban Sileshi)
  • Mentees
• Mentor (Mark Newton)
  • Mentees
• Mentor (Camila Walters)
  • Mentees
• Mentor (Matt Kynes)
  • Mentees

M. Systems, Human Factors and Simulation Research - Senior Mentor (Matt Weinger)

35. Systems Engineering and Quality Improvement
The focus of this hub is health systems engineering and to model and explain the relationships between care delivery, provider performance, and patient safety.   Investigators are particularly interested in applying knowledge from other high-risk industries and methods from human factors and systems engineering to study and improve operational efficiency, clinical decision making and individual and team performance in complex, high-risk clinical environments.

• Mentor (Dan France)
  • Mentees
• Mentor (Amanda Lorinc)
  • Mentees

36. Human Factors Engineering, Industrial (Work) Psychology, Cognitive psychology
Conducting research in the areas of human factors engineering or in the specific areas of cognitive and behavioral task analysis, decision-making, evaluation and assessment by applying human factors techniques (e.g., behavioral & cognitive task analysis, workload & vigilance assessment, adverse event detection & analysis) and observational methodologies in order to conduct patient safety research in a wide variety of healthcare domains (e.g., the OR, ICU, ED, and oncology clinics) and simulated environments in order to study the effects of a wide variety of performance-shaping factors (e.g., potential distractions, equipment & technology, experience & expertise, novel situations, workload, team effectiveness and communication, motivational factors, production pressure, fatigue, etc.) and/or on the performance of care providers as well as non-routine & unexpected clinical events, medical errors, and medication-related events.

• Mentor (Jason Slagle)
  • Mentees
• Mentor (Shilo Anders)
  • Mentees

37. Human-Centered Design and Usability Evaluation of Health Information technologies and Medical Devices
Scholarship in this hub focuses on healthcare system design, and design of health information technology to improve patient safety and care quality. Our aim is to make health informational technology more efficient, effective and be better integrated into the clinical workflow through user-centered design, workflow analysis, and cognitive task analysis.

• Mentor (Shilo Anders)
  • Mentees
• Mentor (Matt Weinger)
  • Mentees
• Mentor (Jason Slagle)
  • Mentees

38. Simulation in Education and Systems Safety
Broadly, healthcare simulation can be said to have four main purposes: education, assessment, research and health systems integration in facilitating patient safety. The goal will be to align faculty interest in a single (or combination) of these four areas such that faculty can develop expertise which will then result in scholarship and publication.

• Mentor (Arna Banerjee)
  • Mentees

N. Device Development and Optimization- Senior Mentor (Mark Rice/Susan Eagle)

Senior mentors in this affinity group have invented, patented and licensed non-and minimally invasive technology to multi-national companies. The expertise includes starting and leading medical device companies and receiving FDA clearance for novel, non-invasive medical devices.  Mentors can also assist with novel ideas that lead to human/animal research, patents, licensing, federal funding, and/or startup companies. 

39. Noninvasive Hemodynamic Monitoring
Our hub focuses on translational research in vascular waveform analysis with a goal to better understand volume status and optimize vascular monitoring. We are an innovative team of clinicians and engineers who collaborate on bench, porcine, and human research in the area of vascular waveform analysis with the goal to someday improve health outcomes in the area of hemodynamic monitoring.

• Mentor (Susan Eagle)
  • Mentees
• Mentor (Bret Alvis)
  • Mentees

40. Music, Alarms and Medicine
Our hub focuses on understanding the effects of alarm recognition and response to patient monitor alarms in the operating room in the presence of music and how we can modulate music volume aligned with patient deterioration to improve clinician communication and patient care. Another focus area is developing and testing novel auditory icon alarms to improve clinician response and interpretation of alarms and how we can utilize the data from the auditory stream to develop bimodal and trimodal alarm systems (auditory, visual, vibrotactile/haptic)

• Mentor (Joseph Schlesinger)
  • Mentees

41. Artificial Intelligence to Predict Burn injury
Burn injury estimation using machine learning: We seek to accurately estimate the percentage of total body surface area involved in thermal injury at the time of initial assessment ( non-specialist assessment). The software will use advanced image analysis tied to machine learning algorithms to improve accuracy of TBSA estimation, which is ultimately tied to resuscitation, transfer to Burn center criteria and mortality. The machine learning based TBSA estimation initially needs to be non-inferior to the clinician expert in estimating total body surface area burn involvement.

• Mentor (Avi Kumar)
  • Mentees

O. Healthcare Delivery Science- Senior Mentors (Jon Wanderer, Warren Sandberg)

42. Clinical Decision Support
The clinical decision support hub is focused on informatics innovations that support the delivery of outstanding clinical care through improvements in workflow, deployment of novel methods for detecting clinical conditions in need of intervention and understanding the impact of decision support systems on our care environment. Faculty will propose new concepts for decision support, participate in designing interventions and manage roll-out of these technologies. The Hub has these objectives:

1. Improve patient care through the development and deployment of clinical decision support tools
2. Increase satisfaction with usage of our electronic health record system by increasing the specificity of existing clinical decision support tools
3. Understand the impact of tool deployment through quality improvement and research projects

Faculty that are part of this hub will work closely with HealthIT’s eStar support teams, our department’s VAPIR team, as well as interested medical residents, fellows and other faculty members

• Mentor (Jon Wanderer)
  • Mentees

43. Observational Data-based Research
The Anesthesiology and Perioperative Informatics Research Division (VAPIR) team consists of a multidisciplinary team of physicians, business intelligence analysts, database administrators, and statistical analysts. VAPIR is responsible for creating, maintaining, and analyzing data from a wide variety of clinical sources. Researchers have access to nearly all of the data generated in routine clinical care for observational research. An additional focus of the group has been researching informatics-based interventions, such as clinical decision support.

• Mentor (Rob Freundlich)
  • Mentees

44. Operations Research and Systems Management
The Operations Research and Systems Management hub exemplifies the department’s stated goal of fostering innovation in all aspects of the delivery of excellent clinical care. Faculty will perform research in the engineering and business domains using management sciences to devise better healthcare delivery systems and operations management strategies.

The Hub has three objectives:

1. Undertake scientific research using engineering, economics and business principles to advance the theory and practice of the delivery of care.
2. Collaborate and support faculty across the Vanderbilt University Medical Center by performing multi-disciplinary research.
3. Promote analytical-based education and training of medical residents, fellows, post-graduate fellows, junior medical faculty and business school students.

Faculty that are part of this hub work closely with the Anesthesiology department’s Informatics research division, as well as with the various analytics-oriented departments in the Vanderbilt University Medical Center and School of Medicine.

• Mentor (Vik Tiwari)
  • Mentees

P. Quality Improvement-Senior Mentor (Liza Weavind, Paul St Jacques)

45. Rescuing the High Risk Patient (RRT etc.)
Rapid response is the ability to “rescue” a clinically deteriorating patient in a non-ICU environment to prevent poor patient outcome. The Critical Care Outreach Team (CCOT) is an effort to move to a more proactive response, guided by a virtual intensivist, to address the needs of high-risk patients and prevent the need to escalate care, as well as manage acute situations in place and manage appropriate ICU utilization. The opportunity to impact patient care proactively will result in a better clinical outcome for the patient, a shorter hospital LOS and a lower cost of care. We have developed a robust database which reviews many aspects of each patient undergoing RRT (both medical and surgical) and this database can be utilized to answer many questions around best practices, changes in protocols and predicative modeling to improve our ability to identify and facilitate best care to prevent RRT activations.

• Mentor (Liza Weavind)
  • Mentees

46. Creating and Implementing Best Practices
Hub leaders have experience in implementing QI projects, many of which specifically target provider education.  Methodologies have included development of QuizTime modules, online learning modules, electronic decision-support tools, and multidisciplinary simulation training. The Center for Evidence-Based Anesthesia (CEBA) additionally oversees clinical guidelines and protocols that range from evidence-based guidelines, which apply across the Department, Divisional ERAS guidelines and narrower Standard of Practice documents.

• Mentor (Sheena Weaver)
  • Mentees
• Mentor (Britany Raymond)
  • Mentees
• Mentor (Alex Moore)
  • Mentees
• Mentor (Patrick Henson)
  • Mentees

Q. Clinical/Hospital Administration and Leadership- Senior Mentor (Steve Doherty, Ted Yagmour)

47. Practice management
Expertise in this hub focus on MACRA, Coding and Billing, and Operating Room Management.

• Mentor (Yaghmour)
  • Mentees

48. Healthcare Legislation and Advocacy
Expertise focuses on healthcare legislation process in Tennessee and in DC, understanding some of the most current and important issues: Drug Shortages, Opioid Crises, Rural Pass through, Surprise Medical Bills, etc, being a part of the ASA Grassroots Network, including how to effectively lobby for change and develop relationships with your representatives, and Participation at the ASA Legislative Conference

• Mentor (Yaghmour)
  • Mentees

49. Revenue Cycle/Finance/Utilization management
The business of healthcare is multifaceted with opportunities across the spectrum including provider documentation, financial analysis, reporting, reimbursement, government regulations, compliance, and legal.  One may choose to approach these as a generalist or pursue an area of specialty.  Either approach is valuable and would be an opportunity for a successful leadership role.

• Mentor (Rothman)
  • Mentees