Upstate AHEC Collaborates with the Upstate Healthcare Coalition for Emergency Response Conference

Upstate AHEC will collaborate with the Upstate Healthcare Coalition to sponsor a one day conference entitled, “Improving Mass Fatality Management in the Upstate: How Do We Work Together?” on March 13, 2015 at the Hilton Greenville to a target audience of disaster response professionals within the Upstate Region of South Carolina. The goal of the symposium is to educate emergency response providers on the available resources and responsibilities of numerous disaster response agencies and community partners.

Often in the event of major disasters, various response agencies are not fully informed as to each piece of the disaster response umbrella. This symposium will serve as an information exchange outlet in order to create a more thorough response system and a more unified regional disaster response team.

The need for training is paramount in the field of disaster response. Keeping all responding partners up to date regarding the latest services and resources is critical for effective and comprehensive response to the community, during both manmade and natural disasters. Including representatives from all response partners, this symposium will be a critical component to information and resource sharing.

As a result of this symposium, partner agencies will be knowledgeable regarding each of the response agencies that exist in each upstate county, as well as how to access services in a timely and effective manner. Attendees will also leave the symposium with an understanding of how all pieces of this puzzle fit together and will share information learned with their home agencies. This will increase the collaboration and effective use of services for the region.

To learn more about the symposium, please contact Bennie Pettit at bpettit@upstateahec.org.

Marchek Siblings Stay Connected With Upstate AHEC Through Academic Journey

A pair of siblings from Greer are giving back to current Upstate AHEC Health Careers students after completing the program themselves. Alex Marchek, MD is in his first year as a family medicine resident at Prisma Health Seneca. His younger sister by two years, Anna Marchek, is a second-year medical student at Edward Via College of Medicine (VCOM) Carolinas. “My mom likes to say she did good,” Anna joked. “Both of her kids are going to be doctors. She went two-for-two.” Anna (left) and Alex (right) Marchek are pictured with Nita Donald, Executive Director of Upstate AHEC. While Alex and Anna have both chosen to pursue medicine as a career, their interest in healthcare developed differently. Alex describes his discovery of health sciences as a slow realization. “It was definitely something that was on my radar really young,” said Alex. “My parents will say when I was six years old, I was talking about doing something in medicine. I had some really great science teachers in elementar...

Pee Dee AHEC Clinical Placements Help Students See Challenges – and Opportunities – of Rural Primary Care

Third-year medical student Omar Guerrero didn’t find his passion for a career in healthcare until he began shadowing health professionals as an undergraduate student. “I just knew that I really loved science and working with my hands,” said Guerrero, who double-majored in Public Health and Cellular & Molecular Biology while at the University of South Florida. It all clicked for him once he was able to observe physicians in their encounters with patients. “I saw there was a real need for Spanish-speaking physicians,” said Guerrero. “There’s a lot of disconnect between providers and Spanish-speaking patients and I thought that was definitely an area that I could make a difference in.” Now in his third year at A.T. Still University’s School of Osteopathic Medicine in Arizona, Guerrero is doing a clinical placement at Beaufort-Jasper-Hampton Comprehensive Health Services, Inc. in Richland. Guerrero was connected with Pee Dee AHEC and their Health Professions Student (HPS) program...

Simulation Training Prepares Students for Rural Primary Care

Since its inception in 2021, South Carolina AHEC’s Simulation Education Training (SET) has remained a favorite experience amongst health professions students statewide. Pee Dee AHEC Scholars and other health professions students pose for the camera during a simulation Since its inception in 2021, South Carolina AHEC’s Simulation Education Training (SET) has remained a favorite experience amongst health professions students statewide. SET uses simulation-based technology to expose students to clinical environments and scenarios that mirror what providers experience in rural, medically-underserved communities. “A lot of simulations are emergent or hospital-based and students are usually being graded as a formal assessment when they participate,” said SC AHEC Curriculum Coordinator Dawn Leberknight, who was heavily involved in the development of the initiative. “We tried to make [SET] more informal to expose students to simulations before it’s high stakes, and then to really focus on rura...

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