UNE announces winning team for Case national finals

The first annual UNE Case Competition has culminated with a winner.  Held on March 30, the final round was organized by the Interprofessional Student Advisory Team (IPSAT). The competition was modeled after the University of Minnesota’s CLARION case competition where interprofessional teams of students perform a root cause analysis of a complicated patient case study, detailing what went wrong and making improvement recommendations.

The final five teams that competed on March 30 were selected March 27-28 from among the original 11 competing teams.

UNE's winning team is truly representative of UNE:  Brendan P. Roggow, DPT ’13; Cody R. Lapointe, OT ‘13; Eugenia Edmonds, COM, ’15; and Kimberly B. Mulcahy, COP ‘14. They won a  $3000 prize, and will now travel to the national finals in April to compete with teams from across the country.

The UNE Community will have an opportunity to see the winning presentation on April 10 at Noon in WCHP Lecture Hall.

The high quality of the presentations made judging extremely difficult for the panel: Dr. Lisa Letourneau, executive director of Maine Quality Counts; Former COM Associate Dean Dr. Meredith Tipton of Tipton Enterprizes;  Leslie Brancato, CEO of Portland Community Health Center; Sylvie Demers, Regional Director of CSI; and Jacqueline Cawley COM ’89, associate chief medical officer at MaineHealth.

The winning teams’ poise, professionalism and knowledge of the complex clinical and public health challenges of the case impressed the judges. They were also impressed by the teamwork and integration of interprofessional competencies in their deliberations.

Along with the many students, the UNE community made this event a success. Faculty, staff and administrators participated as mentors, judges, support personnel  and provided funding support. Numerous health care professionals from the area also volunteered as preliminary round judges.

UNE President Danielle Ripich said: “I want to congratulate our students on an excellent competition and offer a thank you to Justin Levesque COP ’14 for his initiative and to Lisa Pagnucco for the hours she dedicated to establishing what, I believe, will become an enduring tradition at UNE. I also thank our judges for doing the difficult work of analyzing the presentations. And now … the next round!”