Research & Publications
The Department of Medical Education pursues a wide range of research in the education of medical students, residents, practicing physicians and patients. A sampling of such projects and associated publications is listed below; in addition, individual faculty pages list current and ongoing work.
Behavioral Medicine
The Department of Medicine’s faculty are trained behavioral scientists, representing backgrounds in psychology, education, sociology and anthropology. Their research draws on these approaches and tools for the study of medical education and practice, institutional change and empowerment-based approaches to behavior change.
Diabetes Activities
Diabetes-related social and behavioral research is a mainstay area of research for the department. Faculty studies focus on methods of assessing social and psychological factors that influence both patient self-care practices and the effectiveness of various educational approaches. Research programs include assessing social and psychological factors that influence patient self-care practices, delivering effective patient education, applying the empowerment-based approach in self-management interventions, and evaluating sustainable, community-based education and support programs.
Faculty have developed a number of diabetes-related assessment instruments including:
- Diabetes Semantic Differential Scale
- Diabetes Knowledge Test
- Diabetes Care Profile
- Diabetes History
- Diabetes Attitude Scale, known as DAS-3
- Diabetes Empowerment Scale
Most of these instruments are available at the Michigan Diabetes Research and Training Center Web site.
Additional research-based developments include new methods of integrating quantitative and qualitative data to refine and refute specific hypotheses about how diabetics approach their self-care. The results of these studies have broad implications for the best ways to educate patients and their health care providers in order to ensure successful management of the disease.
The impact of the department’s research on the health care community’s approach to diabetes treatment is further extended by faculty presentations at conferences and speaking engagements. Our expertise on the empowerment of patients to manage their diabetes and their self-care is world renown. Faculty are also heavily involved in the Michigan Diabetes Research and Training Center, one of six National Institutes of Health-funded Centers focused on research and training in the basic, clinical, translational, behavioral, health systems and educational sciences.
Geriatrics
Department faculty actively participated in revising the Medical School's geriatrics curriculum. From 1999 to 2005, the Medical School introduced sweeping changes, formally integrating geriatrics information throughout the curriculum and introducing geriatrics cases to first-year medical students. To evaluate the effectiveness of these changes, studies were conducted to analyze students' initial attitudes towards and knowledge of the elderly and their health care, and how these beliefs and understanding changed during medical education.
Translational Research
The department is working to increase the number of clinical researchers with the necessary skills for generating studies that bring the benefits of basic science research to patient care. Translational research training programs include grants with an emphasis on developing the skills and scholarly success of researchers from medicine, basic science and other health care fields.
Physician Performance
The department also examines ways to improve the delivery of health care through enhanced clinical performance and the systems in which clinicians work. Examples of projects and associated publications include:
Lockyer JM, Harrison RV. The role of chart audit, review, analysis and continuing medical education in physician performance enhancement. In Davis DA, Fox RD (eds) The physician as learner – linking research to practice. Chicago, Illinois. American Medical Association.
