UConn Health

May 16, 2013 | Christopher DeFrancesco '95 (CLAS) - UConn Health

National Patient Safety Foundation Honors UConn Medical Student

Stephen Nelson was one of six winners of the Young Physicians Patient Safety Awards.

Stephen Nelson
Stephen Nelson (left) is one of the winners of the National Patient Safety Foundation’s Young Physicians Patient Safety Awards, pictured at the NPSF Patient Safety Congress in New Orleans with Dr. Lucian Leape (center) of the NPSF’s Lucian Leape Institute and Dr. Donald J. Palmisano (right) of The Doctors Company, whose foundation funds the awards, on May 9, 2013. (David Aleman for UConn Health Center)

One of the last things Stephen Nelson did as a student before graduating from the UConn School of Medicine Monday was attend a patient safety conference in New Orleans to accept an award.

Nelson is one of six winners of the Young Physicians Patient Safety Awards, good for a $5,000 cash prize and complimentary travel and registration to the 15th annual National Patient Safety Foundation Patient Safety Congress held last week.

“I became very interested and passionate about it,” Nelson says, after a surgical rotation with Dr. Scott Ellner, director of surgical quality at Saint Francis Hospital and Medical Center and assistant professor of surgery at the UConn School of Medicine. “I wanted to see patient safety included more in the medical school curriculum.”

He polled his classmates. They agreed.

“More than 80 percent said they were interested,” Nelson says. “They’re interested in learning things like error causation and mitigation, human factor concepts, error disclosure and apology, crucial things like that. We wanted a bigger emphasis. You can always use more.”

Ellner says Nelson was instrumental in helping enhance the medical school’s patient safety curriculum.

“He sees the bigger picture,” Ellner says. “He’s passionate about medicine, and also passionate about doing the right thing for patients at all costs. He just picked it right up. I’m just very proud of him.”

Nelson calls Ellner “a phenomenal role model and a great physician.”

Winners of the Young Physicians Patients Safety Awards are recognized for their “deep personal insight into the significance of patient safety work,” according to the NPSF’s award announcement. Third- and fourth-year medical students and first-year residents who were in hospital settings within the last year were eligible to submit essays on patient safety. The awards are funded by The Doctors Company Foundation in partnership with the NPSF’s Lucian Leape Institute.

Nelson says he’s using use the prize money to take a European vacation with his wife. He then starts an orthopaedics residency at Yale-New Haven Hospital.

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