Performance Improvement in the Department of Surgery
Faculty Information
Name:
Dr. Benjamin Jacobs
Email
benjamin.jacobs@surgery.ufl.edu
Phone
(734) 657-9037
Project Title
Performance Improvement in the Department of Surgery
This project is primarily:
Clinical
Research Project Description:
Student will have the opportunity to participate in a performance improvement project within the Department of Surgery. This project will involve direct experience with the clinical enterprise at UF Health. Student will learn about surgical quality, PDSA Cycles, and quality metrics including Vizient, VQI, and NSQIP. We expect this work to result in a published manuscript.
Does this project have an international component or travel?
No
The Role of Brain-Bone Marrow-Gut Interaction following Major Trauma
Faculty Information
Name:
Dr. Alicia Mohr
Email
alicia.mohr@surgery.ufl.edu
Phone
(352) 273-5670
Faculty Department/Division
Surgery
This project is primarily:
Translational
Research Project Description:
Traumatic injury followed by critical illness provokes pathophysiologic changes in the bone marrow and the gut that contribute to persistent anemia and changes in the microbiome which significantly impact long-term recovery. This project will define the interactions between the stress, chronic inflammation, bone marrow dysfunction, and an altered microbiome which will provide a strong foundation for future clinical interventions to help improve outcomes following severe trauma.
The medical student will determine if we directly link changes in hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells (HSPC) and erythroid progenitor cell fate and function with sympathetic stress-induced changes establishing brain-bone marrow communication following trauma. Targeted inhibition of specific inflammatory signaling pathways and their ability to restore homeostatic HSPC fate can be performed in our preclinical model of rodent polytrauma model followed by seven days of restraint stress. In addition to these basic science studies, analysis of human trauma samples can provide the framework for translation to the bedside. The medical student will begin an understanding of reviewing scientific literature and learn basic science laboratory techniques. They will perform cell cultures, ELISAs, as well as assist with qRT-PCR. The medical student will also perform statistics and report the results from the experiments. He/she will develop insight on how translational research can be applied in the clinical arena.
This work is funded by the NIH NIGMS R-35 GM152216 (PI Mohr)
Relevant publications
Munley JA, Kelly LS, Park G, Pons EE, Apple CG, Kannan KB, Bible LE, Efron PA, Nagpal R, Mohr AM. (2024). Non-selective beta blockade enhances gut microbiome diversity in a rodent model of trauma, hemorrhage, chronic stress. In press J Trauma & Acute Care Surg
Munley JA, Kelly LS, Gillies GS, Kannan KB, Pons EE, Bible LE, Efron PA, Mohr AM. (2023). Effects of trauma plasma-derived exosomes on hematopoietic progenitor cells. Shock 59, 591-598. PMID:36772985
Loftus TJ, Mira JC, Kannan KB, Plazas JM, Delitto D, Stortz JA, Hagen JE, Parvataneni HK, Sadasivan KK, Brakenridge SC, Moore FA, Moldawer LL, Efron PA, Mohr AM. (2018). The post-injury inflammatory state and the bone marrow response to anemia. Am J Respir Crit Care Med 198, 629-638. PMID: 29768025
Does this project have an international component or travel?
No
Health Services and Quality Research in Peripheral Arterial Disease
Name:
Dr. Benjamin Jacobs
Email
benjamin.jacobs@surgery.ufl.edu
Phone
(734) 657-9037
Faculty Department/Division
Surgery
This project is primarily:
Clinical
Research Project Description:
We have a robust health services research program, utilizing local, regional, and national databases. We are dedicated to improving the care of patients with peripheral arterial disease and venous disease – specifically patients at risk for limb loss. Opportunities exsit to execute a project from conception to publication. Alternately, quality improvement projects leading to publication are an option if the student has that particular interest.
Does this project have an international component or travel?
No
Incorporating Patient Values in Proxy Decision Support
Name:
Dr. Tyler Loftus
Email
tyler.loftus@surgery.ufl.edu
Phone
(352) 273-5670
Faculty Department/Division
Surgery
This project is primarily:
Translational
Research Project Description:
Our overall objective is to develop, validate, and share interoperable (i.e., OMOP (Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership)-compatible) software for generating patient-specific value assessments that attend to ELSI (Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues) and inform generative artificial intelligence-enabled proxy decision support. Our central hypothesis is that generative large language models (LLMs) can accurately incorporate patient values and computable phenotype triggers to generate ethical and patient-centered treatment recommendations for decisionally incapacitated patients. Our proof-of-concept LLM takes patient value profiles and clinical scenarios as inputs and generates scenario-specific recommendations. This model requires prospective, external validation with human subjects, pairing with automated computable phenotyping methods, attention to ELSI, human-centered design, and extension to electronic health record (EHR)-embedded, real-time decision support.
Does this project have an international component or travel?
No