Katie Ann Kowalek

Interests

Teaching

Interprofessional Communication, Undergraduate Medical Education, Graduate Medical Education

Courses

Scholarly Contributions

Journals/Publications

• Patel, S. B., Webber, Z., Strah, D. D., Hellinger, R. D., Yrun-Duffy, M., Kowalek, K. A., & Seckeler, M. D. (2023). Acute Hospital Outcomes for Renal Transplantation in Patients With Moderate or Severe Congenital Heart Disease. The American journal of cardiology, 186, 87-90.
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  Children and adults with congenital heart disease (CHD) are increasingly recognized to be at risk for acute and chronic renal injury. Some of these may progress to the need for renal transplantation. We hypothesized that patients with underlying moderate or severe CHD who undergo renal transplantation will have worse acute hospital outcomes. Using a national administrative database, we queried for admissions aged 0 to 50 years with moderate or severe CHD and renal transplantation and compared these to admissions without CHD. There were 56 admissions for renal transplantation in the CHD group (0.04%) and 26,285 admissions in the group without CHD (0.21%, p
• Kowalek, K., Bochatay, N., Ju, M., & Van Schaik, S. (2021). The impact of interprofessional perspective-taking on moral distress in the pediatric intensive care unit. Journal of interprofessional care, 1-8.
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  Moral distress arises when constraints outside of healthcare professionals' control prohibit them from acting according to the ethically sound course of action. It can be triggered by poor communication and different perspectives between professionals. We examined whether and how taking the perspective of the other profession reduces moral distress among pediatric intensive care nurses and physicians. Using elements of a previously published scale, we created a Vignette-based Moral Distress Rating Scale (V-MDRS). Study participants from three sites included 105 nurses and 34 physicians who read a patient vignette with their own profession's perspective, completed the V-MDRS, then received the other profession's perspective and completed the V-MDRS again. We conducted semi-structured interviews with nine nurses and nine physicians who completed the V-MDRS to explore how interprofessional perspective-taking impacts moral distress. Nurses experienced higher baseline moral distress than physicians (mean ± standard deviation 31.1 ± 6.9 vs 26.4 ± 5,
• Munoz, F. A., Chin, C., Kops, S. A., Kowalek, K., & Seckeler, M. D. (2021). Increased length of stay and hospital charges in adolescents with type 1 diabetes and psychiatric illness. Journal of pediatric endocrinology & metabolism : JPEM, 34(2), 183-186.
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  Type I diabetes mellitus (T1DM) is one of the most common chronic diseases of childhood. Diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) in this population contributes to significant healthcare utilization, including emergency room visits, hospitalizations, and ICU care. Comorbid psychiatric illnesses (CPI) are additional risks for increased healthcare utilization. While CPI increased risk for DKA hospitalization and readmission, there are no data evaluating the relationship between CPI and hospital outcomes. We hypothesized that adolescents with T1DM and CPI admitted for DKA have increased length of stay (LOS) and higher charges compared to those without CPI.
• Strah, D. D., Kowalek, K. A., Weinberger, K., Mendelson, J., Hoyer, A. W., Klewer, S. E., & Seckeler, M. D. (2021). Worse Hospital Outcomes for Children and Adults with COVID-19 and Congenital Heart Disease. Pediatric cardiology.
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  The aim of the current study is to investigate hospitalization outcomes of COVID-19 positive children and adults with moderate or severe congenital heart disease to children and adults without congenital heart disease. Retrospective review using the Vizient Clinical Data Base for admissions of patients with an ICD-10 code for COVID-19 from April 2020 to March 2021. Admissions with COVID-19 and with and without moderate or severe congenital heart disease (CHD) were stratified into pediatric (
• Andler, C., Daya, S., Kowalek, K., Boscardin, C., & van Schaik, S. M. (2020). E-ASSESS: Creating an EPA Assessment Tool for Structured Simulated Emergency Scenarios. Journal of graduate medical education, 12(2), 153-158.
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  The entrustable professional activity (EPA) assessment framework allows supervisors to assign entrustment levels to physician trainees for specific activities. Limited opportunity for direct observation of trainees hampers entrustment decisions, in particular for infrequently performed activities. Simulation allows for direct observation, so tools to assess performance of EPAs in simulation could potentially provide additional data to complement clinical assessments.
• Munoz, F. A., Benton, L. D., Kops, S. A., Kowalek, K. A., & Seckeler, M. D. (2020). Greater length of stay and hospital charges for severe asthma in children with depression or anxiety. Pediatric pulmonology, 55(11), 2908-2912.
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  Asthma is one of the most common chronic disorders of childhood and is associated with significant healthcare utilization and costs. Comorbid psychiatric illnesses, specifically depression and anxiety, are more prevalent in patients with asthma and associated with worse asthma control, more emergency department visits, and increased hospitalization rates.
• Zinter, M. S., Barrows, B. D., Ursell, P. C., Kowalek, K., Kalantar, K., Cambronero, N., DeRisi, J. L., Oishi, P., & Dvorak, C. C. (2017). Extracorporeal life support survival in a pediatric hematopoietic cellular transplant recipient with presumed GvHD-related fulminant myocarditis. Bone marrow transplantation, 52(9), 1330-1333.

Presentations

• Seckeler, M., Hoyer, A., Kowalek, K., Weinberger, K., & Strah, D. D. (2021, September). Enalapril improves pulmonary artery pressure for infants with single systemic right ventricles – Analysis of the Pediatric Heart Network Infant Single Ventricle public use dataset. Pediatric and Adult Interventional Cardiac Symposium 2021. Las Vegas, Nevada.

Poster Presentations

• Seckeler, M., Price, A., Kowalek, K. A., Garcia, G., Thoeny, A., & Schock, S. (2023, March). High rates of congenital airway anomalies in neonates with single ventricle congenital heart disease. . American College of Cardiology ACC.23/WCC Scientific Sessions. New Orleans, Louisiana.
• Seckeler, M., Kowalek, K., Yrun-Duffy, M., Hellinger, R., Strah, D., Webber, Z., & Patel, S. (2022, October). Wish We Were Kidding: Kidney Transplantation Outcomes in Patients with Congenital Heart Disease. Annual Arizona ACP Scientific Meeting. Tucson, AZ.
• Strah, D. D., Kowalek, K., Patel, S., & Seckeler, M. (2021, April). Recurrent stenosis after extracellular matrix implantation for congenital heart disease. The Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions 2021 Scientific Sessions. Virtual (COVID-19).
• Seckeler, M., Kowalek, K., Kops, S., Benton, L., & Munoz, F. (2020, May). Longer length of stay and higher hospital charges for status asthmaticus in children with comorbid psychiatric disorders. American Thoracic Society 2020. Philadelphia, PA.
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  Event cancelled due to COVID-19 pandemic