Clinical Exploration for Bioengineers

BIOEN Honors Project

Winnie Leung, CJ Mowry, Kevin Mun, Linhchi Pham, Jessica Wang
November 24, 2014

Project Rationale
The goal of this project is to introduce bioengineering students into the clinical setting so
students will understand what problems exist in the medical field and how engineers can work
with clinicians to solve them. This project is in response to a need in the Department of
Bioengineering to make students more aware of the current needs that can be addressed with skills
learned in engineering classes and bioengineering core. Participation in our program is designed to
help place students studies in context to the real world and practical applications.
An overview of our project is as follows: we contacted a number of physicians affiliated with
the University of Washington Medical Center (UW Medicine) and have received confirmations from
seven so far who are willing to mentor students visiting their clinics. Students will sign up on a
Catalyst survey (already sent out to bioeunder emailing listserv on November 5th) and be
required to complete a series of vaccinations. As project coordinators, we will also be facilitating
students progress through shadowing paperwork from UW Medicine. Beginning in January, we will
be introducing physicians to students and allowing the physicians and students to set up meeting
times among themselves. We are requiring at least one clinical exposure learning experience per
student and a written reflection due at the end of the academic quarter about what was learned,
what problems did the student identify, and a brainstorm as to how this problem might be
addressed. This process will repeat in Spring Quarter with students rotating to a mentor of a
different specialty.
Depending on how smoothly the first iteration of our project goes in Winter Quarter, in
Spring we may decide we have the time and capacity to incorporate an additional hands-on
learning experience with the Institute for Simulation and Interprofessional Studies (ISIS) at UW
Medicine. This workshop with ISIS would take a group students down to the simulations center at
the UW Hospital so students can learn from working with life-like mannequins what basic
procedures take place in an operating room and/or emergency room. The session would be at no
cost to us and offer an additional learning opportunity for students looking to gain insight into
medicine and medical education.
We will gauge our success at meeting our objectives by reading student reflections and assessing
whether what they learned was what we had envisioned students would be learning about by being
with physicians in a clinical setting. We will be looking for students to have thought critically about
the problems they have seen and brainstormed a couple ideas as to how a solution could be
approached. We will also be sending a survey to the physicians to gauge how the experience was for
them as well as collect feedback to include in an instructional packet for future years students
should there be interest in continuing this program. In addition, we are hopeful that the
relationships between students and physicians can continue as younger students become seniors in
the Department of Bioengineering, and that perhaps this will lead to future team capstone projects
with students having a deeper understanding of the context of their project.

Proposed Timeline of Project:

Necessary Resources
Having physician mentors is crucial to the success of our project, and so we need to
maintain in contact with the physicians who have agreed to help us. Contact has and will continue
to be made primarily through email. Others who will be important to our success include various
staff involved with processing paperwork to let students shadow and learn from clinicians. We plan
to keep in close contact with volunteer and student coordinators in the hospitals to make sure we
follow appropriate procedures for verifying student vaccinations and HIPAA training, if necessary.
Additionally, if we decide to collaborate with ISIS, we would need to keep in contact with the
program coordinators to sign up for an ISIS section during Winter Quarter for planning in the
Spring.
In terms of physical needs, we will need meeting rooms to have information sessions,
orientation meetings, and possible end-of-quarter meetings to debrief with the students who have
participated. As bioengineering students, we are able to reserve and use the conference rooms in
Foege North without any cost to us, and so the majority of our meetings will be in Foege. At the end
of the year, we may decide to have a reception with all the students, clinicians, and instructors who
have helped us to celebrate our achievements. We plan to be looking for scholarships to support
our team leadership efforts, and if we happen to have funding by the end of the year, we may

decided to do our reception in a fancier venue such as the Husky Union Building (HUB). Otherwise,
all costs in this project will be split among the pockets of the team leaders.

Organizational Plan
The duties for this project will be split up as follows among the team leaders:
Winnie: Will facilitate the process of pairing mentors to students in both Winter and Spring
quarters with Jessica. Will also be main contact for physician mentors she invited to
participate in the program and contact ISIS in the Winter to set up sessions in the Spring.
CJ: Will be vaccinations and paperwork liaison and field all questions from students
regarding these issues. Also will be main contact for student and volunteer office personnel.
Will also be main contact for physician mentors he invited to participate in the program.
Kevin: Will be responsible for taking notes as the year progresses on things to include in
the end-of-year packet for future years looking to continue this program. Will also be main
contact for physician mentors he invited to participate in the program.
Linhchi: Will be responsible for communication within the group of students selected to
participate in the program and send out announcements about orientations, reminders, and
meetings. She will also be collecting reflection surveys at the end of each quarter and
sending out feedback surveys to the physician mentors who participated.
Jessica: Will be responsible for making room reservations in Foege, emailing the
bioeunder listserv with announcements, and keeping an eye out for funding and
scholarship opportunities. Will facilitate the process of pairing mentors to students in both
Winter and Spring quarters with Winnie. Also will be main contact for physician mentors
she invited to participate in the program.
This project will be promoted mainly through email to the bioeunder listserv and by word-ofmouth. We will take sign-ups through the Catalyst survey we have already sent out to all the
undergraduates in the Bioengineering Department. Currently, we have eighteen students signed up
in the survey, and with the addition of the five group leaders, we have a total of 23 students looking
to participate.
Anticipated Issues and Plans to Resolve:
One potential issue is that there may be more students who want to participate than we
have spaces for students without overburdening our physician mentors. We have seven physicians
and a total of 23 students so far, so each physician would need to be willing to take on 3-5 students.
We will be sending out a follow-up email to the physicians who have agreed to participate and ask
how many students they are willing to take on. We are also looking to see if there are more

physicians we can invited to participate to even out the numbers. Worst case scenario, we will have
to turn down some of the students who signed up on the survey last and tell them we do not have
the space to accommodate them, but ideally we would like to include all those who are interested.
Another issue we anticipate is the students not completing their vaccinations or paperwork
in a timely manner. To address this issue we plan on making a clear deadline for these things in
early Winter Quarter and potentially dropping students who do not meet our deadline. In this case,
we may decide to make a waitlist of students and replace the spots of students who are dropped
with those who did not make it into our student pool the first time due to the lack of available
positions.
The last major issue that may occur is our physicians backing out of the program, forgetting
that they said they would help us in the program, or having an abrupt change in situation such that
they can no longer participate. In this case, we would do all we can to reassign the affected students
to a new mentor and make sure they still get clinical experience. In the event that a student goes the
entire Winter Quarter without a clinical experience due to this kind of mishap, we may give them
priority in an ISIS workshop in the Spring so they may at least engage in some sort of interactive
learning in the year.
Assessment of Our Teams Leadership Strengths
As a whole, we cover every category within the leadership strengths with at least two
people in each category. We are especially strong in our relationship skills, as every single one of us
has a strength in that domain. Our weakest categories are influencing and strategic thinking,
although even in those categories we have two members each with those strengths. We can build
on these strengths by forming partnerships with others outside of our group. For instance, we may
work with Dr. Taylor and/or Dr. Neils to build on these physician partnerships for continual
correspondence and potential capstone projects. Our leadership strengths are as follows:
Jessica: Restorative, Empathy, Harmony, Developer, Woo (Executing, Influencing, Relationship Skills)
Winnie: Ideation, Futuristic, Strategic, Relator, Learner (Relationship Skills, Strategic Thinking)
CJ: Achiever, Consistency, Arranger, Developer, Learner (Executing, Relationship, Strategic Thinking)
Linhchi: Achiever, Restorative, Empathy, Positivity, Developer (Executing, Relationship Skills)
Kevin: Restorative, Arranger, Developer, Includer, Positivity (Executing, Influencing, Relationship Skills)