{"id":83951,"date":"2013-09-27T09:02:27","date_gmt":"2013-09-27T13:02:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=83951"},"modified":"2013-11-27T14:23:34","modified_gmt":"2013-11-27T19:23:34","slug":"uconn-takes-national-sickle-cell-stage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2013\/09\/uconn-takes-national-sickle-cell-stage\/","title":{"rendered":"UConn Takes National Sickle Cell Stage"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Sickle<\/a>
From left: Genice Nelson, Nayre Farrington and Teresa Works each submitted abstracts that were accepted by the Sickle Cell Disease Association of America for oral presentation at its annual convention in Maryland. Dr. Biree Andemariam (seated) is lead author of all three abstracts.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Two nurses and a social worker from the UConn Health Center\u2019s sickle cell disease team are in Maryland this week to present to a national audience.<\/p>\n

The Sickle Cell Disease Association of America (SCDAA) has accepted all three of UConn\u2019s abstracts, submitted by nurse practitioner Genice Nelson, nurse Nayre Farrington and social worker Teresa Works, for oral presentation at its annual convention.<\/p>\n

\u201cUConn has never had this kind of multidisciplinary presence at this meeting before, and it speaks volumes about how rapidly our program has advanced\u201d says Dr. Biree Andemariam, founding director of the Health Center\u2019s Comprehensive Sickle Cell Clinical and Research Center<\/a> and lead author of all three abstracts. \u201cIt\u2019s important to me that my team, who play important and active roles in all these projects, have the opportunity to be on the national stage. It\u2019s quite remarkable, and I\u2019m really proud of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Works\u2019 study focused on the importance of a social worker being part of a sickle cell disease patient\u2019s care, especially as it relates to emotional symptoms from traumatic experiences that may exacerbate pain from the illness.<\/p>\n

\u201cHaving a comprehensive clinic is really important because the patients really get all the disciplines to kind of wrap around their needs,\u201d Works says. \u201cThey have the physician, they have nursing, they have somebody scheduling their appointments and coordinating their care, and social work that deals with both the concrete services and the behavioral health needs. The patients have gotten to know me. They trust me. They see that I\u2019m a permanent part of their health care team. They feel safe opening up about the difficulties they may have coping with their disease, their pain, their stresses. Not all of our patients have emotional needs, but those who do finally have a way to manage them. Our approach allows mental health services to be embedded in their medical care and this seems to make a lot of sense for them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Farrington studied the impact of the first five years of the formal transition program between the pediatric sickle cell disease program at the Connecticut Children\u2019s Medical Center and UConn\u2019s adult program, which is the only comprehensive adult program in central Connecticut.<\/p>\n

As part of this unique combined transition program, the entire UConn sickle cell clinical team travels monthly to Connecticut Children\u2019s sickle cell disease clinic. Ideally each child meets with the UConn team at least four times between ages 16 and 21. They learn what it takes to successfully manage their disease as an adult, get to know the adult providers and get comfortable with the idea of one day leaving Connecticut Children\u2019s. Many also make appointments for a guided tour of UConn\u2019s sickle cell clinic and John Dempsey Hospital in advance of their first doctor\u2019s appointment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey meet members of our team, which alleviates the anxiety of transitioning, because the pediatric care setting is where they\u2019ve been receiving care since birth,\u201d Farrington says. \u201cData from the last five years show us that our program is successful in transitioning nearly 70 percent of the time. We have figured out that those who didn\u2019t transition were more likely to live further away from UConn and to have started the transition process at a later age. These are easily modifiable risk factors. We\u2019ve already made changes to fix this and are now seeing more than 90 percent success.\u201d<\/p>\n

Neither Works nor Farrington has presented to a national convention before.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m proud to represent this team of women,\u201d Farrington says. \u201cWe do fantastic work here. It\u2019s a pleasure to be able to represent UConn, our team, and our dedication to patients with this horrible disease.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not the first time at the convention for Nelson, who also serves as SCDAA\u2019s secretary, but it is the first time she\u2019s seen three people from the same team chosen to give separate oral presentations, which she calls \u201ca tremendous compliment to our program.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nelson analyzed how the UConn Health Center Emergency Department sickle cell pain management fast-track pathway, implemented three years ago, has impacted quality measures.\u00a0 It empowers nurses to evaluate the patient\u2019s eligibility for this protocol based on simple clinical assessments, and if certain criteria are met, the patient can get his or her first dose of pain medication from a nurse rather than wait for a physician.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was in place before I joined UConn last year, and our colleagues in the ED deserve a lot of credit for making this protocol work,\u201d Nelson says. \u201cWhat we\u2019ve found is that because our patients can come in and are typically being treated within a 30-minute window with that first dose of medicine, significantly fewer of them are being admitted. And for those who are admitted, they\u2019re not in for as long. We\u2019ve also been able to cut down their length of stay by an average of at least three days. Plus, each of our sickle cell patients has a specific treatment protocol, what that first dose of pain medicine should be. This is great for the hospital, but even better for the patients. They are getting their pain under good control quickly and are able to go home and live their lives. That\u2019s all they really want to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Andemariam<\/a>, who was elected vice chief medical officer of SCDAA and is also chief medical officer-elect, is one of the panel moderators for this year\u2019s convention. She joined the UConn Health Center in 2007 as the first physician-scientist recruited following a pledge from the Hartford nonprofit Lea\u2019s Foundation for Leukemia Research. Andemariam started the UConn Health Center\u2019s adult sickle cell disease program, which is part of the Lea\u2019s Foundation Center for Hematologic Disorders<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cEach year it becomes more formal, more organized and more comprehensive,\u201d Andemariam says. \u201cNot only are we providing clinical care, but we are also advancing our mission to develop new and better ways to treat all aspects of sickle cell disease: everything that someone who lives with sickle cell disease deals with, whether it\u2019s physical health and pain, whether it\u2019s access to care, or whether it\u2019s dealing with emotional pain that may exacerbate physical pain. We are also improving the region\u2019s ability to continue quality care in our young. Now these children have a place to go when they outgrow pediatric care. Not only are we providing this care, but we are using evidence to show measurable impact. That\u2019s what differentiates us even more.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Follow\u00a0the UConn Health Center<\/a> on\u00a0Facebook<\/a>,\u00a0Twitter<\/a> and\u00a0YouTube<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three abstracts selected for oral presentation by the Sickle Cell Disease Association of America show \u201chow rapidly our program has advanced.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":83953,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[179,1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[57,2010],"class_list":["post-83951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uconn-health","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-31 06:31:36","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83951"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83951\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86758,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83951\/revisions\/86758"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/83953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83951"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=83951"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=83951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}