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Department of Pediatrics

Hospital Medicine

Pediatrics / Pediatric Hospital Medicine / Current Research
 

Research

Pediatric Hospital Medicine consists of faculty with diverse research interests including: transition to home after hospital discharge, quality improvement and safety, education of residents and medical students, and transitions of care from pediatric to adult providers.

Research Activities

Lauren Solan, M.D., M.Ed.

Development of a Novel Pediatric Risk Assessment Tool to Predict Health Care Reutilization

Dr. Lauren Solan received this 2-year grant through the University of Rochester Clinical & Translational Science Institute (UR CTSI) Mentored Career Development Program (KL2). The study seeks to evaluate the utility of an existing electronic health record-embedded adult-based risk assessment tool for use in children. The project may also identify additional sociodemographic and systems-level factors that may contribute to a pediatric patient’s risk of reutilization (i.e., readmission or Emergency Department revisit). The hope is to build and validate an electronic health record-embedded pediatric reutilization risk assessment tool.

Solutions for Patient Safety (SPS) Collaborative, Readmissions Reduction

Golisano Children’s Hospital (GCH) is a member of SPS which is a national collaborative of children’s hospitals seeking to reduce serious harm and create a safe environment for the children we care for. Reducing pediatric readmissions is one of many initiatives included within SPS and GCH. Our group is working to identify areas for improvement surrounding hospital discharge and learning how to better support a patient and family in their transition home to avoid unnecessary readmission. We are working on improvements in discharge instructions and medication reconciliation.

Improving Pediatric Discharge Summaries

This quality improvement project seeks to redesign the existing pediatric discharge summary template based upon feedback from community pediatric providers and pediatric residents. Dr. Lauren Solan serves as the PI and mentor for the residents involved in this project.

Elise W. van der Jagt, M.D., M.P.H.

In addition to Hospital Medicine, Dr. Elise van der Jagt is also a member of the Division of Pediatric Critical Care. He was the Principal Site Investigator for the multi-institutional Therapeutic Hypothermia after Pediatric Cardiac Arrest (THAPCA) clinical trial funded by the NHLBI (NIH) with the PI at the University of Michigan.

Dr. van der Jagt's current primary research interests are in pediatric resuscitation, pediatric pain/sedation management, pediatric hospital medicine, quality improvement and pediatric simulation in healthcare. As a member of the national American Heart Association Pediatric Sub-Committee for about 10 years, he helped evaluate the scientific evidence underlying the international guidelines for pediatric resuscitation which are reviewed every five years. In addition, his scholarly work has included not only formal participation in resuscitation research (e.g. as site investigator of the THAPCA project), but also in the use of simulation methods for educating the healthcare community in the management of acute emergency events in children, including resuscitation. He has been involved in numerous local quality improvement projects in the hospital setting and is currently developing active research in the indications for Pediatric Rapid Response Teams.

Barbara L. Asselin, M.D.

Dr. Barbara Asselin continues her research and leadership activities in pediatric hematology-oncology while she practices clinical pediatric hospital medicine. Her major research interests are treatment and biology of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL), treatment-related cardiac toxicity and role of cardioprotectants in preventing cardiotoxicity of cancer therapy, and L-asparaginase pharmacology, efficacy and immunology. She is a member of the national Children’s Oncology Group (COG) and Dana-Farber Childhood Leukemia Consortium, two of the major cooperative groups responsible for research of childhood cancers and their treatment. She serves as study investigator on seven Children’s Oncology Group sponsored research projects and clinical trials. Multiple presentations and publications resulted from the above mentioned studies. Funding was provided for the HEART study by grants from the St. Baldrick’s Foundation and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. As Chair of the Data and Safety Monitoring Committee (DSMC) for the URMC James P. Wilmot Cancer Center, Dr. Asselin oversees the data and safety monitoring plan for all investigator-initiated oncology studies, compliance with committee policies and federal regulations, and receives funding for these activities through the Cancer Center.

Keely E. Dwyer-Matzky, M.D., M.S.

Dr. Keely Dwyer-Matzky, a pediatric and adult hospitalist, was the principal investigator for a prospective randomized controlled trial evaluating the baseline knowledge on pediatric to adult-oriented health care transition in hospitalized adolescent and young adults and the effectiveness of an educational intervention on perception of knowledge, attitudes and participation in transition planning. The initial results of the project were published in Academic Pediatrics in 2017. See Publications. Her research activities and interests also include:

  • Improving medical education of residents and medical students in the inpatient setting.
  • Quality improvement and application of evidence based medicine in the inpatient setting.

Investigators

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