News

This article was originally posted on NEW YORK DAILY NEWS .

COVID-19 has laid bare stark health care disparities between Black and Hispanics and their white counterparts. According to the CDC, these communities have borne the brunt of the pandemic, with cases and deaths nationally exceeding their share of the population.

Here in New York, as a physician working for Weill Cornell Medicine, I witnessed this firsthand. On the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where Weill Cornell Medicine is located, mortality rates from COVID-19 were lower than in other parts of the city, particularly upper Manhattan and the Bronx, historically under-resourced areas where the population is largely Black and Hispanic.

Director of Education for the Weill Cornell Medicine/NewYork-Presbyterian Simulation Center, Dr. Timothy Clapper received a grant from the NewYork-Presbyterian (NYP) MDxPx Program for his research, “An innovative instructional design model to improve delivery of bad or difficult news for PGY-2 residents across multiple specializations.”

 The award follows the NYP Patient Experience Group’s awarding Dr. Clapper funding to support the successful implementation of delivering bad or difficult news training for interdisciplinary fellows from five adult and pediatric subspecialty training fellowships.

 He and his co-researchers, including faculty and staff from our Department of Pediatrics (Aliza Solomon, DO; Christine Joyce, MD: Kevin Ching, MD; Winnie Shen, and Kyle P. Burns) found significant improvements in fellow’s ability to deliver difficult news and value for the evidence-based, innovation framework that includes targeted feedback.

The Department of Pediatrics is pleased to announce the promotion of Emily Coppedge, NP to Chief Nurse Practitioner for the Pediatric Subspecialty Practice at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. In this role, Ms. Coppedge will work with the Medical Director and Practice Administrator of the Pediatric Subspecialty Practice to enhance patient care in the unified practice.

As Chief Nurse Practitioner, Ms. Coppedge will serve as a clinical, educational, and administrative resource to nursing personnel and oversee patient care delivery and management. She will work in collaboration with attending physicians and multidisciplinary health care teams to optimize patient care and team performance.  

Ms. Coppedge received a Bachelors in Nursing from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Masters in Nursing from New York University.  She is board certified as an advanced practice nurse specializing in pediatrics and brings 16 years of pediatric nursing experience to this role.  As a registered nurse, Ms. Coppedge worked a variety of inpatient and outpatient roles and after extensive training in diabetes care, obtained her certified diabetes educator certification.

Pediatric ICU Fellow, Dr. Priyanka Mehrotra has received the Bronze Snapshot Research Award from the Society of Critical Care Medicine for her study, “Timing of Tracheostomy in Critically Ill Infants and Children with Respiratory Failure: A PHIS Study."

Despite tracheostomy’s historical depth, the growing complexity of the pediatric patient requiring long-term ventilation makes the decision of when to undergo tracheostomy challenging, creating vast variability in practice standards for timing of tracheostomy insertion in pediatric patients. In this study, Dr. Mehrotra aims to contribute to the current literature on timing of pediatric tracheostomy. She will describe the timing of tracheostomy placement, associated demographics, and clinical characteristics in a large pediatric critical care cohort using the Pediatric Health Information system database. Dr. Mehrotra will then compare the clinical outcomes based on timing of tracheostomy.

Dr. Mehrotra's overall goal is to provide more data on pediatric tracheostomy timing and associated outcomes to alleviate the shared decision-making burden amongst physicians and parents when discussing this life-altering intervention.