July 30, 2015

Lew Bennett, DNP, chair, Nurse Anesthesia Department, and Ferne Cohen, EdD, associate chair, Nurse Anesthesia Department, started developing Dragon Traks in fall 2014. The innovative system performs two functions that are having incredible impact on nurse anesthesia students: tracking their clinical cases and completing daily clinical evaluations.

This functionality is changing the game within the department and helping students and faculty to maintain graduation requirements which include a number of clinical cases. Currently, the clinical evaluation process is managed using two different systems – both of which are flawed. In introducing Dragon Traks, Bennet and Cohen sought to address the fundamental issues with other programs and allow students to go paperless, using electronic evaluations and case tracking.

Enlisting the help of Drexel engineering students to set up the programming, Bennet and Cohen got the idea for Dragon Traks off the ground. In fact, a team of five senior engineering students made Dragon Traks their senior project, working diligently throughout the academic year.

Once Dragon Traks is completed, Bennett has big plans for the system. He said, “The goal would be, if this were to work as we are hoping it will, is to sell Dragon Traks to other programs across the country.”