Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center
Fatima Laura Mejia-Connolly, DO; pediatric critical care medicine fellow (PGY-6) at Children's Hospital of Richmond at VCU. I completed my undergraduate and medical school in the Hudson Valley, NY area, and my general pediatric residency at SUNY Upstate Univesity Hospital in Syracuse, NY.
My main area of research lies in ventilator mechanics and ultrasound. Currently, I am a PI for a feasibility, pilot study titled "Evaluation of weaning in invasive Neurally Adjusted Ventilatory Assist (NAVA) versus Conventional Mechanical Ventilation (CMV) in pediatric patients using Ultrasound and electrical activity of the diaphragm." The purpose of this study is to investigate electrical activity of the diaphragm during weaning off invasive mechanical ventilation and sonographic diaphragm measurements of function in NAVA vs CMV in the pediatric patient. Our hypothesis is that earlier diaphragm recovery through improved synchrony of patient ventilator interactions on NAVA will diminish length of time between weanable point and extubatable point by 30% compared to CMV. We also predict that patients with improved electrical diaphragmatic activity will have preserved diaphragmatic function and thus favorable diaphragmatic measurements leading to decreased time on invasive mechanical ventilation.
I also have some interest in QI thus my current abstract for a project to improve unplanned extubation rates in our PICU.
Lastly, I also have interest in clinical informatics thus have completed EPIC physician builder certifications with plans to pursue a master's in clinical informatics in the near future.