Trinity University HCAD Herald

First year students: Rebecca, Christina, Emily, Anna and Caroline We would like to extend our gratitude to AnneMarie Witecki, Megan Powe and Patra Katsigiannis for inviting the first-year students to the Women’s Forum on Thursday, October 30 th .  We were fortunate to listen to Keynote Speaker, Christann Vasquez, President of Seton Medical Center and a prominent figure in the health care industry.  Following our discussion with Ms. Vasquez, the students formed small discussion groups to speak about the challenges that females have in executive and leadership positions. The session ended with the opportunity for students to ask questions to a panel of successful Trinity Alumni including Xochy Hurtado, Tina Ortega, and Leah Spann-Lacy.  Many of the questions focused on work-life balance, raising children while in the work force, and the general challenges that women face in the business world.  Overall, this was a very informative and engaging session. We hope to pass this

Mr. John Hornbeak and Rebecca Phillips The first-year students are excited to have the opportunity to interact and learn from Mr. John Hornbeak, former CEO of the Methodist Healthcare System. Currently, they are studying lean methodology and Six Sigma. Today, the students participated in a game involving red and white beads. The game included six workers and two inspectors. The job is to produce white beads and minimize the amount of red beads, otherwise known as “defects” of the process. This experiment was done to illustrate bad management, system variation, ranking workers, and workers’ performance. Overall, it was a simple experiment with a meaningful message.   Mr. John Hornbeak giving directions to the "above average employees" Congratulations to Katherine! She had the least amount of defects for the first day

In the on-campus program's Health Services Organization & Policy course, students periodically engage in an in-class activity known as "Lightning Lab." This activity challenges students to exercise creative thinking and problem solving skills in a short period of time, requiring bursts of innovation to address varied problems or scenarios.  In short, students are challenged to catch that one idea that could be lightning in a bottle, often in less than one hour. The most recent Lightning Lab activity had students working together in groups to devise innovative technological solutions to current issues surrounding health care organizations.  In the days leading up to class, students were encouraged to be thinking about possible innovative ideas incorporating health care technology to some degree.  During class, students were divided into groups, and group members shared their different ideas and eventually developed a more thought-out proposal.  Groups then p

Many of the first-year grad students joined a social kickball league. This past Tuesday was their very first game as well as their very first victory! The final score was 5-3. Congratulations to Shawntae Batiste, voted as the team’s MVP! HCAD First-year girls Overall, this league serves as a great way for the first- year students to bond and get to know each other outside of the classroom.The games are every Tuesday at the STAR Soccer Complex (timings are still TBA), so come and cheer your fellow classmates on as they continue their undefeated season. A very special thank you to Katherine Le for coming out and supporting the team, despite the chilly weather! Intimidation is key

A few of the first-year graduate students spend their Wednesday evenings volunteering at the San Antonio Refugee Clinic (SARHC) through the Institute for Health Care Improvement (IHI) .  SARHC is a student-run clinic with faculty from the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio. It is a cooperative effort between nursing, dental, and medical students with the help of several volunteers. Not only is SARHC an acute care clinic with the primary goal of serving the needs of about 5,000 immigrant refugees living in the San Antonio area, it also operates as a teaching clinic where students can observe and learn as they help patients.   First-year students, Dolapo and Beatrice   So where do we as health care administrators fit in? The first-year students are working to streamline the flow of patients in and out of the clinic. Currently, they are collecting data and timing how long it takes for patients to be triaged by the nurses, be seen by the stu

Are you interested in learning how to demonstrate a process improvement strategy in an effective and meaningful way? Use puppets! This is exactly what the first-year students did in Dr. Schumacher’s class this past Wednesday. Dolapo, Aashini, Livia, Shawntae, and Anna served as members of a production team, making puppets with paper. Christina judged whether each puppet was accepted or rejected. The team was able to make 23 puppets in 20 minutes.  This sounds impressive, right? Wrong. Only 9 of the 23 were deemed to be “effective” and passed quality control.  Although this was a fun classroom activity, this demonstrated prevalent problems that all companies and organizations encounter: the effective use of their resources and employees.  After the activity, the students came up with various ways that the team may have improved their overall productivity and perhaps made higher-quality puppets in a sufficient amount of time.   On another note, congratulat