Kamath Selected For National CLARION Competition
Nisha Kamath, DDS Candidate 2019, has been selected to represent the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Dentistry at the national 2018 Interprofessional Education (IPE) CLARION Competition in April.
“Nisha is the perfect choice to represent the School of Dentistry and UNC at the Clarion competition,” said Nigel Matthews, DDS, MD. “Her varied educational portfolio and awareness of the importance of interprofessional education gives her the ability to see the bigger picture when it comes to collaborating with other health care professionals. I am immensely proud of her and the fact that she was the top-ranked applicant across all of the UNC Schools.”
CLARION is a University of Minnesota student organization dedicated to improving health care through interprofessional collaboration. For more than 15 years, the University of Minnesota has hosted the local student case competition for health professional students, enabling them to achieve a 360-degree perspective on patient safety in today’s health care system and how it might be improved. In 2005, CLARION expanded the competition to the national level. Institutions send teams of four students from two different professions, including dentistry, public health, medicine, nursing and more.
Teams are given a case and are charged with creating a root cause analysis. Each team has 20 minutes to present their analysis to a panel of interprofessional judges, where they are evaluated in the context of real world standards of practice. Three teams will be selected for shared awards – first place receives $7,500, second place receives $5,000 and third place receives $2,500. The national case competition presentations will be held Saturday, April 14, 2018, in Minneapolis, Minn.
“I entered dentistry with the vision of a career that centers on interprofessional, coordinated care that ultimately improves outcomes for patients,” said Kamath. “The CLARION competition is just the beginning to laying that foundation. It is an honor for me to be representing the dental profession and UNC this April.”
Kamath is a member of the School of Dentistry’s Interprofessional Education Committee, the Inclusive Excellence Committee, and a regular volunteer at the UNC Dental SHAC Clinic, a student-led clinic that provides cost-free care to patients. She was also a mentor in the American Student Dental Association’s Bridging the Gap Program, which pairs current dental students with aspiring pre-dental students across the state. In July 2017, she was a team member of the UNC Uganda Project, which provided free dental care to more than 400 patients in the Kampala region.
Kamath received her Bachelor of Arts in Spanish language from George Mason University, and a Master of Arts in food systems, culture and policy from New York University.
