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Researcher: "Doctors must say, 'I'm not satisfied'"

To provide better patient-centered care, doctors must not only dig into the research, but also must closely examine their own actions and beliefs, speakers told medical students and others attending the 22nd Annual Research Forum on April 17.

To provide better patient-centered care, doctors must not only dig into the research, but also must closely examine their own actions and beliefs, speakers told medical students and others attending the 22nd Annual Research Forum on April 17.

Many of the sessions and research presented at the all-day event at KU School of Medicine–Wichita touched on the theme of "Patient Centered Research in Kansas." Other research shared the goal of trying "to answer questions so that doctors practice better," said K. James Kallail, the school's associate dean of research.

"We are a heavy-duty clinical campus that does some research, so research doesn't get highlighted in the same way as other activities. The forum is a way to say, ‘Here's what we're doing, and we want to share it with you,'" Kallail said.

The day's first speaker, Dr. John Spertus of St. Luke's Mid-America Heart Institute and the University of Missouri-Kansas City, discussed research and showed his passion for patient-centered care. He used anecdotes and studies to illustrate how patient care can vary widely by doctor. He discussed how guidelines, the fact that not all patients are "average," occasional disregard or ignorance of existing research, and doctors' stubbornness about changing views and practices can affect treatments and outcomes.

"What if every shift at the Boeing plant got to decide how long the wing should be?" he asked at one point, exhibiting his ready humor.

"To have basically identical patients treated completely differently based on who the attending physician was really odd to me," Spertus said. "It has led to a national commitment to trying to improve care, to deliver evidenced-based personalized care so that we can start to improve patients' understanding of treatments and their experiences ... so that we can start to give the right treatments to the patients that benefit most to improving their outcomes."

"We have to be humble enough to say, ‘I am not satisfied,'" he told the crowd.

The other plenary speakers were Dr. Tracie Collins, professor and chair of the department of preventive medicine and public health at the KU School of Medicine–Wichita; and Dr. Robert Moser, secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment and former KUSM–W faculty member.

"It's pretty cool to have the chief health officer of the state, and be able to have that interaction with our students," Kallail said.

In her talk, Collins discussed peripheral arterial disease , a condition that narrows arteries and impedes circulation, and studies about its care and treatment. And, yes, there was a quiz at the session's close.

"For you starting out in your careers as physicians, when you have a patient in front of you, you're very smart and you have all this literature you have reviewed, you have to find out what is important to the patient," Collins said. "What you think is important might not resonate with them."

The plenary sessions are just one piece of the forum. Its breakout sessions tend to focus on education more than research and allow attendees to pick and choose based on their interests. One covered better ways to search for research literature; another discussed how to use social media to engage patients.

The forum's third element involves poster presentations detailing student, resident, and faculty research. Each poster is judged on such criteria as clarity of the question and how well methods and results are displayed. "It has to communicate in a clear way and teach others what you've learned," Kallail said.

For students and residents, the research can determine whether they are selected by a residency program or whether they are chosen to study a subspecialty. "Research is more important now because the competition has increased over the years," Kallail said. "The competition for the few seats for cardiology is high. Research is one of the discriminating factors."

In opening remarks at the forum, Kallail mentioned he had come full circle, as he was chairman of the committee that organized the first forum in 1991. He became associate dean of research on March 31 and said, in an interview, that he hopes to tailor the office of research's efforts to the campus' mix of instructors, which consists largely of volunteers with relatively few paid faculty.

"My object is to focus the research efforts on our constituents, who are not researchers but are interested in research. I want to lay the foundation so they can be researchers," Kallail said. "It's one of the tools they use to become better doctors. They view research as a tool like a stethoscope or a scalpel."

 

 


KU School of Medicine-Wichita