Research

Alec O'Connor, M.D., M.P.H.

Internal Medicine Resident Curriculum Change Assessments

We have redesigned our inpatient teaching services in an effort to improve the learning environment on the wards and to increase the time residents can devote to direct patient care and educational activities. We are in the process of assessing the impact of these changes on residents and patients.

Pain Management in Emergency Patients

We are in the process of analyzing the outcomes associated with intravenous opioid analgesic administration in ED patients. In addition, we are exploring the reasons prescribers select one opioid over a seemingly equivalent alternative, which may provide explanations for unusual prescribing behaviors that we have observed. From a separate, large database, we are also exploring the management and outcomes of all ED patients with pain.

Cost-Effectiveness of Pharmacotheraphy

We are exploring the cost-effectiveness of different types of pharmacotherapy, especially focused on analgesics.

Valerie Lang, M.D.

Impact of Hand-Offs on Performance of Third Year Students in the Medicine Clerkship

With the increased number of hand-offs generated by night float systems, work hour restrictions, and the concentration of longer length-of-stay patients on teaching services, students have fewer opportunities to evaluate "fresh" patients with undifferentiated problems. Evaluating undifferentiated patients gives students the opportunity to generate their own observations and hypotheses and practice their clinical reasoning skills. This observational study examines the impact of hand-offs on students' learning during the course of the Medicine Clerkship.

Impact of Non-Teaching Services on the Types of Patients Third Year Students Encounter in the Medicine Clerkship

We previously observed that residents on the inpatient services encounter more complex, acutely ill, and longer length-of-stay patients than those found in the hospitalized patient population as a whole, when compared to non-teaching services at two hospitals.

Residents encounter fewer patients with some common diagnoses that they will be responsible for managing once they are in practice. Medical students rotate with the resident teams and are assigned a subset of the residents' patients to follow during their clerkship. This retrospective study examines the impact of non-teaching services on the distribution of patients to medical students, as compared to patients on non-teaching services and to the hospitalized population as a whole.

Dr. Alec O'Connor and Dr. Valerie Lang

Department Of Medicine