Students from the Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine brought home first place in a "Jeopardy"-style quiz bowl and research poster competition at the West Virginia Chapter of the American College of Physicians conference.
The conference was held last weekend in Morgantown, W.Va., where Marshall's medical school and West Virginia University's medical school went head-to-head in competitions.
Billy Terrell, fourth-year medical student at the Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine, said the purpose of the conference was for physicians to get together, present research and discuss medical topics facing physicians today. He said the competitions added entertainment as a way to learn and present new research conducted by Marshall's and WVU's medical schools.
The final score for the quiz bowl was 800 points for Marshall, and 350 points for West Virginia.
"Our win definitely gave our medical school bragging rights," Terrell said. "I believe the students that competed against us went in thinking it was going to be an easy win. We embarrassed them."
Terrell was the captain and the speaker for the winning quiz bowl team. The other members included Paul Bailey, Janelle King and Sydnee McElroy.
"It was good for Marshall's medical school to show that we are a competitive program and that the students going through our program are just as knowledgeable, if not more, than the students coming through the WVU program," Terrell said.
The questions asked at the quiz bowl covered topics under the category of internal medicine such as cardiology, dermatology and infectious diseases, Terrell said. He said with the category being so broad it was almost impossible to study and prepare for the competition.
"The most enjoyable part of competing was the four of us working together to come up with these answers," Terrell said. "One question was so difficult that doctors in the audience clapped for our team that we got it. Everyone was impressed with our team."
Mary Sale, second-year medical student from the Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine, was the winner of the poster competition with her research titled "Use of Medicare Billing for Tobacco Cessation Counseling."
Sale said about 80 posters were entered into the contest, and the main entrants were residents or physicians in their fellowship.
"I was the only second-year student at the competition and that's what made this such a big deal," Sale said. "I am glad I represented Marshall so well at the competition."
Sale said her research focused on how often physicians and patients took advantage of billing Medicare for smoking cessation counseling.
"Medicare approved reimbursement for smoking cessation counseling in 2005, and so what I looked at was the occurrences of physicians that did that counseling and billed correctly," Sale said.
Sale said after reviewing more than 36,000 patient visits, only 18 percent of physicians submitted claims for this counseling opportunity.
"I concluded that Medicare billing for tobacco cessation counseling is greatly under utilized," Sale said. "When Medicare makes changes, there is no flow of information from Medicare to billing to the physician to implement those changes."
Sale said if more physicians knew they could bill Medicare for smoking cessation counseling, it could lead to more people attempting to quit smoking.
Winning this award qualified her to compete at the National American College of Physicians conference in Philadelphia in April 2009.
Miranda Rosiek can be contacted at rosiek2@marshall.edu.
Be the first to comment on this article!