Interdisciplinary team of faculty members awarded seed grant to collaborate with Special Olympics.
Rebecca N. Weston, EdD, MSN, RN, CNE, assistant professor, UMSON; Nancy Culpepper, MBA, director, Standardized Patient Program, UMSON; Samantha Fuld, DSW, MSW, LCSW-C, clinical assistant professor, University of Maryland School of Social work; Norman Retener, MD, FACP, assistant professor, University of Maryland School of Medicine; and Patricia Schaefer, DNP, RN, CNE-cl, CHSE, CNE, assistant professor and director, Simulation Lab at the Universities at Shady Grove, have been awarded a $25,000 seed grant from the University of Maryland, Baltimore's (UMB) Center for Interprofessional Education for the project "Collaborating Across Disciplines to Recruit, Train, Retrain, and Effectively Utilize People with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities as Standardized Patients."
In collaboration with Special Olympics International and Special Olympics Maryland, the UMB team will recruit and train people with disabilities as Special Olympics Health Messengers and integrate them into our Standardized Patient Program. This partnership will help expose students to real scenarios and to people who can speak to the genuine issues related to their disability and its impact on their life and their health.
pictured, l. to r.: Weston, Culpepper, Fuld, Retener, and Schaefer