Center for Health Sciences teams up with Unity Health

By Debbie Waggoner, Pharm.D., BCNP

The Center for Health Sciences and Unity Health, formerly known as White County Medical Center, have been working closely together for several years but have recently experienced significant collaborative growth, which has provided additional robust teaching and research opportunities as well as advanced interprofessional education and practice experiences for CHS students.

Unity houses the Graduate Medical Education Department which encompasses both Doctor of Osteopathy and Doctor of Medicine residency programs affiliated with Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences Medical Programs (internal medicine, family medicine, emergency medicine and psychiatry). In addition, Unity is home to a nationally accredited Doctor of Pharmacy residency program that has been actively involved with the College of Pharmacy for a number of years.

CHS students have the opportunity to gain clinical practice expertise at Unity through a number of avenues: rounding with a medical team/preceptor, shadowing a practitioner/preceptor, longitudinal practice experiences and research. For example, pharmacy faculty have several clinical practice sites within Unity Health including the critical care unit, internal medicine, family medicine, cardiology and psychiatry.

Students are given the opportunity to be an active member of an interprofessional team via those practice sites that may consist of (but are not limited to) an attending physician, physician assistants, clinical pharmacists, DO/MD residents, Pharm.D. residents, nurses, social workers, DO/MD students, Pharm.D. students and PA students. Approaching a patient-centered case from a variety of perspectives allows the team to deliver more efficient, beneficial and comprehensive medical care while increasing the proficiency of each practitioner along the way.

Collaborative research has proven to be a key element in the strengthening of the University and Unity’s partnership. The Unity GME program is heavily involved in research and has a standing agreement with the University regarding the utilization of Harding’s Institutional Review Board via a Harding faculty liaison. The IRB is an administrative body established to protect the rights and welfare of human research subjects recruited to participate in research activities conducted under the oversight of the institution with which it is affiliated.

Dr. Beckie Weaver, dean of the College of Allied Health, is chair of Harding’s IRB Committee which ultimately determines the status of every IRB proposal submitted from the Unity GME program. Dr. Debbie Waggoner, associate professor in the College of Pharmacy, is the designated Unity/HU IRB liaison and works closely with Dr. Suporn Sukpraprut-Braaten, GME director of research. Dr. Waggoner maintains a clinical practice site within the GME program and works with both the internal medicine and family medicine teaching teams.
The integration into this role allows for ease in research partnership and allocation of other specialists at Harding to assist in multiple case reports, poster presentations, publications and national meeting podium presentations. One such endeavor, titled “Interprofessional Collaboration between Graduate Medical Education and Health Science Programs,” was jointly delivered by Drs. Sukpraprut-Braaten and Waggoner at the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine Annual Conference held in Washington, D.C., in April 2018.

Harding University Center for Health Sciences would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to Unity Health not only for the spirit of friendship they have extended to our faculty and students but also for the invaluable experience each student gains through our mutual quest to deliver the highest quality of education and patient care as a community of mission.

— Debbie Waggoner, Pharm.D., BCNP