We Work for Kansas

KU Medical Center Continuing Education & Professional Development specializes in equipping health care professionals across Kansas with key research findings and treatment advances so they can contribute to building healthier communities for all. The exciting medical research performed at KU Medical Center and facilities around the world holds the potential to improve care delivery, enhance quality of life and ultimately save lives.

As a sub-unit of the University of Kansas Medical Center’s Institute for Community Engagement, KU Medical Center Continuing Education & Professional Development designs, develops and implements community-building initiatives that positively impact communities throughout Kansas. 

Life-saving sepsis research

The Kansas Sepsis Project, a statewide continuing medical education program supported by Continuing Education & Professional Development, aims to improve the recognition and treatment of severe sepsis by physicians, nurses and other health care professionals.

Kansas Sepsis Project Mission: to teach physicians, extenders and nurses in all specialties and in hospitals of every size to recognize severe sepsis, to realize that it is an emergency, and to take rapid, organized steps to treat severe sepsis aggressively and successfully. 

Role of Continuing Education

The major medical continuing education program is giving physicians and nurses in intensive care units across Kansas new training to improve treatment of an all-too-common but lethal enemy: severe sepsis, a serious illness that affects more than 10,000 Kansans every year. Approximately 50 percent of those cases turn fatal.

The program seeks to translate education into performance improvement that its leaders estimate can lower sepsis mortality rates below 20 percent and save lives by making the education available to caregivers across the state.

Steven Simpson, M.D., director of fellowship training in the Division of Pulmonary Disease and Critical Care Medicine at KU Medical Center, directs the life-saving initiative. At The University of Kansas Hospital, the work of Simpson and his colleagues have helped reduce the mortality of severe sepsis from 49.1 percent to 22.1 percent. The innovative programming garnered Simpson a Distinguished Service Award from KU Continuing Education in 2012.

Continuing Education & Professional Development continues to play a key role in the success of the Kansas Sepsis Project. After partnering in the design of delivery methods for the programming and gaining and maintaining program accreditation, the group is exploring ways to improve access to the training material for caregivers at critical access hospitals in rural, underserved areas.