People with sickle cell disease, their families, healthcare professionals and the public are invited to the free, fifth annual Sickle Cell Symposium on Oct. 6-7 at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute.
The Sickle Cell Symposium is presented by Future Builders Inc. in collaboration with the UAMS Sickle Cell Clinical Program. Free continuing education credit is available.
Starting at 6:30 p.m. Oct. 6, Barbie Brunner, UAMS director of Patient- and Family-Centered Care, will discuss “Engaging Patients and Families for Quality and Safety.” At 7 p.m. LaKisha Johnson, executive director of Sickle Cell Support Services in Little Rock, will present “Advocating for Yourself: Patient Practices for Successful Health.”
Starting at 8 a.m. Oct. 7, Stephanie Figueroa, PA-C, senior emergency medicine physician assistant at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore will discuss “Sickle Cell Rapid Evaluation & Acute Management (SCREAM) for Acute Pain Crisis Patients in the ED — A Safe and Standardized Approach.” At 9 a.m., Elizabeth Storm, MD, an attending physician in the Emergency Department at Arkansas Children’s Hospital will present “Sickle Cell Disease — A Pediatric Emergency Department Perspective.”
The symposium will conclude with a panel discussion at 10:15 a.m. Oct. 7 on the issues of pain medication and “Dependence versus Addiction.” Panelists include Figueroa, Johnson, Storm and Pooja Motwani, co-director of the UAMS Adult Sickle Cell Clinical Program.
“Sickle cell patients, their families and friends will find the presentations especially relevant and informative,” Motwani said. “The symposium again has a strong roster of speakers who are experts in their fields, and we are excited about having Stephanie Figueroa as a guest speaker to join them.”
In the Johns Hopkins Emergency Department, Figueroa has been caring for sickle cell patients in pain crisis for nearly 15 years. For a decade, she has served as a patient champion and liaison between the department, its Emergency Acute Care Observation Unit and the Sickle Cell Care Team within the Division of Hematology. Figueroa has led many efforts to improve the quality and safety of the care of these patients in the adult Emergency Department at Johns Hopkins.
Registration is required. To register for the free symposium and for more information, go to sicklecell.uams.edu, or email Donna Richardson, RN, at djrichardson@uams.edu.