Health Care Team Competition Celebrates 10th Birthday

The Health Care Team Competition, held Feb. 26 at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston, marked a decade of interdisciplinary cooperation between students at UT-Houston, Texas Southern University, and the University of Houston.

The competition involves a fictitious case designed by a group of faculty planners from the three universities. The medically oriented case presents realistic problems the students are challenged to answer. The students are not given the case in advance, but are expected to gather their information by questioning a panel of experts the night of the competition. This year, the case involved errors made in medical treatment.

"The teams compete against each other to solve a complex medical issue before a panel of judges and a live audience," said UT-Houston president Dr. James T. Willerson. "The competition is designed to challenge the knowledge and critical thinking skills of the participants, enhance understanding about health-related disciplines, and encourage an interdisciplinary team approach to health care."

The interdisciplinary team approach proved to be especially difficult for some of the participants.

"I’m not very organized, but being part of a team really forces you to become so," said Babatunde O. Oyediran, a student at the TSU College of Pharmacy. "The others in the group are counting on you to pull your weight, and you can’t if you aren’t organized."

Todd Parker, a student at the UT-Houston School of Nursing, said he most enjoyed the camaraderie among his teammates.

"The best part of the competition for me, was meeting people not only from different disciplines, but also from different universities. The tendency is to be friends with people from just your own discipline, because those are the only people you ever meet. But now I’ve met all of these other people, and I’ve found out a little bit about what they do. And I think that will help me and my patients in the future."

UT-Houston Auxiliary Enterprises supplied $100 scholarships to each member of the winning team, the Green Team, who will also receive an engraved award at a reception held in their honor later this month. Fifty-dollar scholarships go to each member of the second-place Blue Team, and $25 goes to each of the third-place Orange Team participants. The Green Team members were Mini Delashaw, UT-Houston Medical School; Caroline Ngo, UH College of Pharmacy; Jarrod Jones, UT-Houston Dental Branch; Andrea Houston, UH Law Center; Shanna Clark, UT-Houston Dental Branch; Kerri Allen, UH Graduate School of Social Work; Sunay Ravindra, UT-Houston School of Health Information Sciences; Anthea Garza, TSU College of Pharmacy; Andrew Rolniak, UT-Houston School of Nursing; and Darline ElReda, UT-Houston School of Public Health.

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