COMP graduate wins research award

The San Bernardino Sun

by Jim Steinberg, Staff Writer

A graduating resident specializing in family medicine has won the top in-house research award from Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in Colton.

Dr. Uma Devaki, who graduates from the family medicine residency program at ARMC on Tuesday, and has been on the hospital’s rapid response team since becoming an intern, won first-place for her research and report on the "Effects of Implementation of a Rapid Response Team at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center."

The creation of rapid response teams at hospitals worldwide is a new trend, designed to reduce cardiopulmonary arrest rates outside the intensive-care unit.

The team is designed to respond to a patient who is clinically declining and at risk for cardiac arrest. Devaki collected hospital data from January 2007 to March 2009 to analyze the nonintensive-care code blues before and after the implementation of the rapid response teams.

Code blue is the alert sent out when a patient requires immediate resuscitation, generally following a cardiac arrest. Read the full story >>