Dr. Sonnett's primary academic focus is in the area of Quality and Performance Improvement. She serves as the Chair of the NewYork-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital Quality Council and the Chair of the Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital Significant Events Committee. Dr. Sonnett has been the leader of multiple quality improvement initiatives within our division that include management of high risk patients with fever and neutropenia, improving pain management and expediting patient flow in the Pediatric Emergency Department.

Dr. Sonnett is also interested in emergency department resource utilization. She has presented nationally in the areas of both ED resource utilization and quality and patient safety. She serves on the Child Health Corporation of America's (CHCA) expert panel for Whole Systems Measures for Pediatric Emergency Departments. As Chair of the Quality Council, Dr. Sonnett has also spearheaded numerous quality initiatives for the institution and shares her expertise in the areas of patient safety, medical error reduction and quality improvement in health care. Dr. Sonnett is co-investigator on a New York State Department of Health Grant entitled Promoting Pharmaceutical Safety Systems Initiative: PECARN Safety Study.

Dr. Sonnett is an active member of the NYPH Quality and Patient Safety Committee, the NewYork-Presbyterian Board of Trustees Committee on Patient Centered Care and Services Quality, and the Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital Emergency Preparedness Committee.

Dr. Dayan is an established, grant-funded clinical researcher. He is currently the Chair of the Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network (PECARN) Steering Committee. Dr. Dayan has been the principal investigator, co-investigator, or senior investigator on numerous published observational and interventional clinical research studies. His research contributions and interests include the development of prediction rules to identify children at low risk for significant but uncommon illnesses. Particular areas of focus are head trauma, the management of infants with fever and urinary tract infections, and the management of children with seizures.

In addition to clinical research, Dr. Dayan has been a leader in Pediatric Emergency Medicine with respect to the dissemination of the principles of evidence-based medicine, with the overall goal of bridging the gap that exists between research findings and clinical practice. Dr. Dayan's efforts include initiating, organizing, and tutoring multi-day national workshops, rating the quality of published literature for the McMaster Online Rating of Evidence, and helping develop computer-based tools for education.

Dr. Ahmad serves as clinical preceptor in the pediatric emergency division. Dr. Ahmad actively participates in resident/fellow tutorials and academic division meetings.

Dr. Berezow is double boarded in Emergency Medicine as well as Pediatric Emergency Medicine. He initiated and coordinates the medical school anatomy laboratory procedure course which both fellows and attendings five times per year. He coordinates activities associated with emergency medicine residents who rotate in our ED.

Dr. Best's primary interests include medical student education. He coordinates the Pediatric Emergency Medicine experience for the Columbia University medical students as well as the visiting fourth year students. This year, he was named Teacher of the Year by the medical school Class of 2010. Dr. Best is a Residency Advisor for medical students interested in Pediatrics and runs the Summer Physician Mentor Program for high school and college students interested in medicine. Dr. Best's interests are in patient access to community medical care and doctor-patient communication.

Dr. Bhagavan serves as clinical preceptor in the pediatric emergency medicine division. Dr. Bhagavan's research interests include medical education.

Dr. Joan Bregstein has been an Attending in the Division of Pediatric Emergency Medicine since 1995.

Dr. Bregstein has a particular interest in community advocacy, and in establishing and nourishing relationships between the Pediatric Emergency Department and the Washington Heights Community in upper Manhattan. She organizes an annual Pediatric Emergency Medicine Health Fair which caters to over 600 school children from community public and private schools and involves more than 20 divisions in the Department of Pediatrics. She has also reached out to the teachers and parents in the community by running emergency preparedness sessions for the public school faculties and running question and answer sessions for members of the community. She serves as the faculty liaison to the Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital's Family Advisory Council.

Dr. Bregstein is the course director of the Annual Steven Z. Miller Pediatric Emergency Medicine Symposium. The symposium is a national conference which seeks to enhance the knowledge of emergency medicine physicians in the care of the acutely ill pediatric patient. Dr. Bregstein also has an interest in Quality Assurance, reviewing cases for the division, in an effort to better serve the community and maximize the performance of the ED. She represented Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital as team leader on a national multi-center project involving 21 children's hospitals attempting to reduce ED throughput time. This project was sponsored by the Children's Hospital Corporation of America.

Dr. Chernick's research goals include designing an ED-based intervention to start contraception in a timely manner and connect adolescents who use the ED as a frequent source of care to primary health care services.

Dr. Chernick is also interested in evidence-based practice and has presented her work at national meetings.

Dr. Danziger serves as clinical preceptor in the Pediatric Emergency division. She actively participates in resident/fellow tutorials and academic division meetings. Her research interests include investigating parents' ability to recognize signs of respiratory distress in children.

Dr. Gordon was the site Principal Investigator for the PECARN study: Use of Lorazepam for the treatment of pediatric status epilepticus. His prior research endeavors include a randomized clinical trial investigating IM Dexamethasone for asthma. Dr. Gordon is working toward completion of a Masters Degree at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.

Dr. Kessler is research director for the INSPIRE network (International Network for Pediatric Simulation-Based Pediatric Innovation, Research and Education), an international multi-center collaboration that aims to study the clinical impact of educational interventions and disseminate best practice. His research interests include simulation for skill training, point-of-care ultrasound use in pediatric emergency medicine, global health and evidence based medicine / knowledge translation.

Dr. Khan's primary interest is in Clinical and Medical Informatics research. He has multiple publications and has presented multiple abstracts related to informatics. He has also authored PDA software for residents and studied the feasibility of their use in the Pediatric Emergency Department. Dr. Khan also serves as a Technology and Pediatric abstract reviewer for several Pediatric and Emergency Medicine journals. Dr. Khan completed a Masters degree in biostatistics at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. He volunteers as a Thesis Mentor for Masters of Public Health students at the Mailman School of Public Health. In Feb 2008, Dr. Khan, organized and conducted the first Evidence Based Medicine workshop in Bangladesh. He is in the process of establishing an Evidence Based Medicine curriculum for Post Graduate Medical Education in Bangladesh.

Dr. Kwok is actively involved in both research and education within the division. She is the director of the PEM Research Assistant Program. She is the site investigator at Morgan Stanley Children's Hospitalfor the PECARN. She also participates in several research studies including as a co-investigator in the development of a prediction rule for children with abdominal trauma. She is a grant recipient to create and study the utility of an asthma kiosk in the emergency room setting. Her educational focus includes mock codes and trauma as well as evidence-based medicine. She was voted Teacher-of-the-Year by the Pediatric Residents in 2005.

Dr. Pusic obtained his MD at the University of B.C., PEM Fellowship at McGill and Masters Degree in Medical Informatics from Columbia University. He has maintained an unwavering interest in the use of educational technology in clinical settings with particular interest in the interface between education and clinical decision support. He has developed focused computer tutorials that can be delivered immediately after a trainee's interaction with a patient in an Emergency Department. He has also developed an online research methods course for PEM Fellows which was used this year to support a group project. Current research projects include: 1) creation and evaluation of a ECG interpretation decision support tool; 2) evaluating different instructional strategies for teaching x-ray interpretation using computer tutorials; 3) expansion of the series of computer tutorials designed for the emergency department. Dr. Pusic has previously been the site coordinator for the Pediatric Emergency Research Canada network and for the PECARN research network.

Dr. Roskind is the Assistant Director of the Fellowship program. She is responsible for organizing and coordinating the weekly fellows' tutorials and the weekly departmental academic conferences. She has received formal training in evidenced-based medicine, and she co-directs the annual New York City Pediatric Emergency Medicine Fellows EBM workshop. Dr. Roskind is also actively involved in clinical research and is currently involved in multiple projects related to the diagnosis of intussusception. Dr. Roskind is working toward the completion of a Masters Degree in Biostatistics at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.

Dr. Stimell has developed particular interest and expertise in the care of children who are victims of physical and sexual abuse. She works closely with our Child Advocacy Department to create clinical guidelines and protocols, and she is responsible for QA of these cases. Dr. Stimell is also interested in wound management and has coordinated suture workshops at the AAP meeting as well as locally for our pediatric residents.

Dr. Teng is particularly interested in the use of ultrasonography in the Pediatric ED. He coordinates ultrasound education for housestaff and PEM fellows. He is also involved in monthly radiology educational tutorials with the department of emergency medicine.

Dr. Tsai's primary academic interests include medical ethics and research in acupuncture. Dr. Tsai also serves as a representative to the hospital's ethics committee and organizes the highly successful 'Ethics Night' in which the fellows participate. She also organizes an annual "community day fair" in Fair Lawn, NJ to raise money for the town's emergency reserve fund.

Dr. Wagh is the pediatric representative for our hospital’s EMS service. She also coordinates the conferences which our division presents to both the Pediatric residents and the Emergency Medicine attendings and residents.