College to Host Autism Conference
April 22, 2014
Ellen Giarelli, EdD, and Kathleen Fisher, PhD, from the College of Nursing and Health Professions and Jennifer Plumb, DSW/LSW, PhD, from the University’s AJ Drexel Autism Center were awarded conference grant funding from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality NIH/AHRQ. The one-day conference with invitational speakers and networking opportunities, Creating Integrated Healthcare for People with Autism Spectrum Disorder, will take place November 8, 2014 on Drexel’s Main Campus.
The purpose of the conference is to provide the health care community with an opportunity to discuss and co-create solutions to the problems associated with the provision of medical and nursing care to people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) who require treatments in a variety of settings. Attendees will define and describe the ideal environmental, behavioral, and/or individual supports during the provision of medical care to people with ASD; barriers to the delivery of integrated care in emergency departments and in-patient acute care settings; and technology or information system improvements needed to eliminate the barriers to inter-professional communication, across acute care settings.
For those individuals who cannot attend the conference in-person, the day’s events will be accessible via synchronous webinar. The conference will specifically target nurses, nurse administrators, and unit coordinators to discuss integrated care for people living with ASD. Panelists will present clinical and theoretical concepts followed by discussion and open forums to explore how concepts can be translated to clinical settings to improve patient care and generate creative problem-solving approaches to adapting patient assessment protocols, adapting patient teaching and treatment protocols, and to modifying environmental factors to promote optimal therapeutic milieus. After the conference, discussion will be ongoing on social networks and webpages and the sharing of ideas, research information, and access to conference materials will continue. and images here.