OTOLARYNGOLOGY – HEAD AND NECK SURGERY The Division of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery provides cutting edge and innovative clinical care of infants, children and adolescents. We are national leaders in our field and educate the next generation of pediatric otolaryngologists. We continue to see patients in Hartford, Farmington, and Glastonbury and have plans to expand services to new outpatient locations in 2021. During the beginning of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, we rapidly shifted to telehealth visits and continue to offer telehealth for families that choose the option. For families preferring in-person visits, we continue to offer those types of visits as well. In the past fiscal year, we evaluated 12,100 outpatients and performed 2,147 surgeries. We won numerous teaching awards, established new medical simulation models for otolaryngology resident education, presented virtually at national meetings, and had a banner year publishing peer-reviewed articles, and writing and editing textbooks. Christopher Grindle, MD, became a major force in the Connecticut Children’s telehealth initiative. He helped build, train and roll out our telehealth technology to all clinicians at Connecticut Children’s, performed a grand rounds on telehealth, and participated in television interviews and advocacy at the Connecticut state legislature and with federal elected officials. Telehealth rapidly expanded our capability from a few visits a week to over 600 visits per day. Dr. Grindle also developed a streamlined communication tool in Epic enabling subspecialists and referring pediatricians to share information regarding patients with airway problems. For his role as an educator, Dr. Grindle was honored in June 2020 with the R. Timothy Brown Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching in an Affiliated Pediatric Field, and the Didactic Teaching Award from the UConn Pediatric Residency Program.
Katherine “Katie” Kavanagh, MD, continued in her role as director of simulation for the University of Connecticut Otolaryngology residency program. She won first place in medical simulation at the American Academy of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery annual meeting for development of a 3D model for rhinoplasty simulation. At the same meeting, she also presented her experiences in developing a resident wellness curriculum and moderated a panel to address bullying. She was elected as secretary of the Connecticut ENT Society. She has expanded our Voice Clinic services and continues as director of monthly multidisciplinary Airway Conference. Nicole Murray, MD, continues to expand the collaborative Connecticut Children’s Aerodigestive Team. She was elected as ENT representative to the national Aerodigestive Society, and is serving a two-year term for curriculum development. She co-chaired the PICU chief search committee, and as co-chair of the Covid PPE Task Force, she represented Connecticut Children’s on three media news interviews. She was elected vice president of the Connecticut Children’s Medical Staff Executive Committee. Over the past year since joining Connecticut Children’s, Amy Hughes, MD, has worked to increase awareness of and access to care for patients with drooling (sialorrhea). Through outreach to local providers and internal advertising, she is growing her referral base. Her goal is to create a formal sialorrhea/drooling clinic that provides coordinated care for our more complex patients to help limit patient visits and improve patient care. Nancy Grover, MD, founded a multidisciplinary sleep apnea clinic in collaboration with sleep medicine and sleep psychology for children with persistent sleep apnea after conventional management. She has been successfully seeing patients both virtually and in-person with planned expansion of services despite SARS-CoV-2.
Division chief Scott Schoem, MD, MBA, continues in his role as associate director for Surgical Clinical Affairs working closely with the Surgeon-in-Chief Christine Finck, MD, on clinical operations, budgets, mentoring and marketing at Connecticut Children’s. He was also elected as president of the Connecticut Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the first surgical subspecialist in this role. He is on the national board of directors for ENT PAC, the specialty’s nonpartisan, issue-driven political action committee. He is co-editor of Pediatric Otolaryngology for Primary Care, 2nd edition, published by the American Academy of Pediatrics and designed for practicing pediatricians and primary care clinicians. PUBLICATIONS Valdez TA, Kudaravalli S, Kavanagh KR. Combined web and haptic simulation system: a pilot study. Int J Pediatr Otolaryngol. 2020. Munjal T, Kavanagh KR, Ezzibdeh RM, Valdez TA. The impact of Covid-19 on global disparities in surgical training in pediatric otolaryngology. Int J Pediatr Otolaryngol. 2020 Nov; 138:110267. doi: 10.1016/j. ijporl.2020.110267. Epub 2020 Jul 20. Kashat L, Carter B, Mosha M, Kavanagh KR. Mindfulness education for otolaryngology residents: a pilot study. OTO-Open. 2020 Jul-Sep; 4(3):2473974X20945277. doi: 10.1177/2473974X20945277. Kashat L, Carter B, Archambault M, Wang Z, Kavanagh K. A multidisciplinary basic airway skills boot camp for novice trainees. Cureus. 2020. doi: 10.7759/ cureus.8766. Mehta K, Mosha MM, Kavanagh KR. A targeted tracheostomy care educational initiative to augment resuscitation training in the pediatric setting. Int J Pediatr Otolaryngol. 2020 Jun;133:109944. doi: 10.1016/j.ijporl.2020.109944. Epub 2020 Feb 13.
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