Fellowship in Diagnostic Excellence

Julie Ngoc Thai, MD, MPH 

Fellow/Stanford University School of Medicine - Geriatric Medicine, Division of Primary Care and Population Health

Hartford “Age-Friendly” Fellow

Project Summary: Develop a case-based curriculum for medical learners that focuses on improving diagnosis and reducing medical errors in the older adult patient population.

Mentor: Eliana Bonifacino, MD, MS, University of Pittsburgh

Gabor Toth, MD, PhD 

Laboratory Medicine Physician, University of Debrecen, Hungary 

Project Summary: Evaluate how clinicians choose laboratory tests, how/why their ordering practices differ from guidelines, and how clinical lab can support diagnostic decisions​

Mentor: Kristin Miller, DrPH, MSPH, MSL, CPPS, National Center for Human Factors in Healthcare, MedStar Health, Georgetown University School of Medicine

Dhara Amin, MD  

Director of Quality Improvement and Patient Safety, Cook County John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital, Chicago

Project Summary: Better incorporate patients with limited English proficiency in the diagnostic process by enhancing emergency room discharge practices

Mentor: Michael Kanter, MD, CPPS,  Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson Medical School

 

 

 

 

Susrutha Kotwal, MD, SFHM  

Assistant Professor of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine 

Project Summary: Provide diagnostic feedback in the form of “just-in-time” training to hospitalists and teaching teams after rapid response activation leading to care escalation

Mentor: Gurpreet Dhaliwal, MD, UCSF

 

 

 

 

 

Mary Dahm, PhD, MA 

Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Communication in Health Care, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia 

Project Summary: Characterize healthcare policy related to diagnosis in the United States and create a roadmap for the international development of diagnosis-focused policy

Mentor: Leslie Tucker, SIDM

 

 

David S. Burstein, MD, MS 

Medical Director, Associates in Internal Medicine, Assistant Professor, Division of General Internal Medicine, Rush University Medical Center

Project Summary: Improve specificity of diagnoses in clinicians’ documentation through incentives​

Mentor: Timothy Hofer, MD, MSc            University of Michigan

 

 

Margaret Perlia Bavis, DNP, APRN, FNP-BC 

Assistant Professor, Nurse Practitioner/Rush University – College of Nursing

Project Summary: Use simulation-based assessment of diagnostic reasoning through Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE)​

Mentor: Frank Papa, DO, PhD                 Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine

 

 

 

David Kudlowitz, MD

Education, Practice of Medicine, Module Director, NYU Grossman School of Medicine

Project Summary: Enhancing measurement of team- and system-based competencies in the diagnostic process, creating a dashboard to longitudinally assess the growth of diagnostic reasoning and advancement in competencies in OSCEs​

Mentor: Sandra Monteiro, PhD                McMaster University

 

 

Adina Kern-Goldberger, MD, MPH 

Fellow/Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine

Project Summary: Describe diagnostic evaluation and outcomes of obstetric patients with chest pain or shortness of breath to ultimately reduce diagnostic errors by non-obstetric clinicians​

Mentor: David Meyers, MD, Johns Hopkins

 

Carl Berdahl, MD, MS

Emergency medicine physician and clinical informaticist with master’s degree in health services, Cedars Sinai / UCLA.

Project: Dr. Berdahl seeks to prospectively study the frequency of, contributors to, and patient experiences with diagnostic errors occurring among adults discharged from the emergency department. The study will target patients triaged as having urgent or emergent needs but who are sent home from the emergency room.

Mentor: Prashant Mahajan, MD, MBA, MPH

 

 

Leah Burt, PhD

Acute care and gerontology nurse practitioner, Ph.D., University of Illinois-Chicago.

Project: A Diagnostic Reasoning Course Toolkit will be created, serving as a free-of-charge blueprint for NP faculty across the country to implement evidence-based diagnostic reasoning education at individual institutions. Competency-based and grounded in simulation, the Toolkit will target identified areas for diagnostic improvement, as well as provide support for faculty.

Mentor: Andrew Olson, MD

 

Da Jin, MD

Hospitalist in clinical informatics fellowship, Oregon Health & Science University.

Project: Dr. Jin seeks to use machine learning to design an algorithm for detecting symptomatic coronary artery disease and acute coronary syndromes in adult women presenting to outpatient settings with “atypical” symptoms. Subsequent work will focus on using the model for AI-enhanced clinical decision support.

Mentor: Robert El-Kareh, MD, MPH, MS 

 

Casey McQuade, MD

MD seeking master’s degree in medical education, University of Pittsburgh.

Project: Dr. McQuade is seeking to deconstruct what constitutes a high-quality summary statement and how clinicians formulate their summary statements. These results would inform curriculum development.

Funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation

Mentor: Laura Zwaan, PhD

 

 

Edwin Rosas, MD

Adult hospitalist with medical education and QI focus, University of Chicago.

Project: Dr. Rosas is seeking to develop a structured diagnostic timeout for hospitalized patients at risk for clinical deterioration. His work will involve nurse-physician collaboration and will build upon nurses’ SBAR communication model.

Mentor: Christine Goeschel, ScD, MPA, MPS, RN, FAAN

 

 

 

Eliezer Shinnar, MD

Adult hospitalist working with underserved populations, Indian Health Service (Phoenix AZ).

Project: Dr. Shinnar is seeking to ascertain the frequency of types of diagnostic errors that occur around transfers into and out of the Indian Health Service (IHS) hospitals.

Mentor: Gordon Schiff, MD

 

 

 

 

Sarah Slone, DNP, APRN

Doctorate of nursing practice, Ph.D. candidate, Johns Hopkins.

Project: Dr. Slone is seeking to measure the accuracy of existing risk stratification models in NSTE-ACS with the ultimate goal of improving triaging which rural NSTE-ACS patients should be transferred for invasive angiography.

Funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation

Mentor: Kelly Gleason RN, PhD and Kathryn McDonald, PhD

 

 

Kelsey Ufholz, PhD

Ph.D. behavioral scientist in family medicine and community health, Case Western.

Project: Dr. Ufholz seeks to understand how often unintended weight loss is recognized and/or associated with serious medical illnesses such as cancer. The ultimate goal of this research is to develop clinical decision support systems that flag unintended weight loss, particularly among obese patients in whom it may go unrecognized.

Mentor: Ashley Meyer, PhD

Justin Choi, MD

Hospitalist and clinician-researcher, Weill Cornell Medical College.

Project: Understanding group decision-making processes and the biases in the approach to diagnostic decisions of general medicine teams in teaching hospitals through ethnography as well as developing a conceptual model to understand what factors influence teams’ diagnoses.

Mentor: Wolf Hautz, Inselspital in Switzerland

Twitter: @JustinJWChoi

 

 

Yasaman Fatemi, MD

Pediatric infectious diseases fellow, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Dr. Fatemi is working towards a Masters of Science in Health Policy with a concentration in Healthcare Quality & Safety as part of her fellowship within the Center for Healthcare Improvement and Patient Safety, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania.

Project: Developing curricula and assessment tools to understand and improve diagnostic stewardship, i.e. the appropriate utilization of diagnostic tests, and its effect on diagnostic errors.

Mentor: Silvia Mamede, Erasmus in the Netherlands

Funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

 

Ayodele McClenney, BSCE, JD

Director of Business Development and Strategic Partnerships, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Healthcare Quality, Center for Diagnostic Excellence.

Project: Establishing Tele-Dizzy consultation, a quality improvement program using video-oculography goggles to improve diagnosis of acute dizziness and stroke, and assessing its impact at Howard County General and Sibley Memorial Hospitals.

Mentor: Rebecca Jones, Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority

Twitter: @AyodeleMcClenne

Funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

 

Rajasekhara Mummadi, MD

Chief of Quality and Population Health and gastroenterologist, Northwest Permanente, P.C.

Project: Studying the implementation and effectiveness of communication of critical imaging results directly to patients from the Kaiser Permanente Central SureNet monitoring system.

Mentor: Traber Giardina, Baylor

Twitter: @rajmummadi

 

Varun Phadke, MD

Assistant Professor, Division of Infectious Diseases, Emory University School of Medicine. Dr. Phadke is an infectious diseases clinician at Emory and is involved in microbiology and infectious diseases education for medical students, residents, and fellows.

Project: Developing a framework for the cognitive processes used by subspecialists in patient care as they make diagnoses, and developing metrics of consultative care that could be used for assessment and remediation of learners, quality improvement, and a more cohesive understanding of errors.

Mentor: Joe Rencic, Boston U

Twitter: @VarunPhadke2

 

 

Lisa Schwartz, MD, MSc

Assistant Clinical Professor and hospitalist, Internal Medicine Teaching Service, NYU Langone Hospital - Brooklyn.

Project: Developing a Diagnostic Certainty Tool (DCT) within the medical record to track diagnostic reasoning and ultimately educating users on diagnostic uncertainty, missed diagnoses, delayed diagnoses, and diagnostic error.

Mentor: Mark Graber

 

Viralkumar Vaghani, MBBS, MPH, MS

Healthcare informatics analyst, Center for Innovations in Quality, Effectiveness, and Safety, Baylor College of Medicine and Michael E. DeBakey Veteran Affairs (VA) Medical Center. Viralkumar is working towards a Ph.D. in biomedical informatics from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.

Project: Developing, testing, and validating SaferDx Trigger Tool Framework-based e-trigger algorithms using EHR data to identify missed opportunities to diagnose certain conditions in primary care.

Mentor: Hardeep Singh, Baylor

Twitter: @viral_vaghani

Funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

Gopi J. Astik, MD, FHM

Academic hospitalist, Northwestern Memorial Hospital, and Master’s in Healthcare Quality and Patient Safety candidate, Northwestern University.

Project: Investigate changes in diagnoses at transitions in care that represent potential errors in clinical reasoning.

Mentor: Andrew Olson, MD

Twitter: @gopiastik

Funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

 

Rebecca Ojo, MPH, CPPS

Doctor of Public Health candidate, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Project: Examine the concept of organizational risk tolerance, its effects on provider decision-making, and its implications for preventing diagnostic error.

Mentor: Doug Salvador, MD, MPH, Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School - Baystate and Chief Medical Officer at Baystate Medical Center.

 

 

Irit Rachel Rasooly, MD

Master’s of Science candidate in Clinical Epidemiology and a Certificate in Health Care Quality and Patient Safety, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania.

Project: Characterize a subset of diagnostic errors associated with the use of clinical algorithms embedded in the electronic health record in a pediatric hospital.

Mentor: Joseph Grubenhoff, MD, Associate Professor, Pediatrics-Emergency Medicine and Associate Medical Director, Clinical Effectiveness at the University of Colorado

Twitter: @IritMD

Funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

 

Verity Elizabeth Schaye, MD, MHPE

Assistant Professor, NYU School of Medicine.

Project: Using machine learning to identify quality of clinical reasoning documentation and to use this data for learner feedback.

Mentor: Robert El-Kareh, MD, MS, MPH, Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of California - San Diego.

Twitter: @vschaye

 

 

Grant Shafer, MD, MA, FAAP

Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine Fellow, Baylor College of Medicine/Texas Children’s Hospital.

Project: Examine the frequency of diagnostic error in the first seven days after a premature infant is admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) using the Safer Dx Instrument.

Mentor: Prashant Mahajan, MD,MPH, MBA, Professor and Vice-Chair, Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of Michigan

Twitter: @shafergt

 

 

Ali S. Saber Tehrani, MD

Clinical Neuro-Vascular Fellow, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; Doctor of Philosophy, PhD candidate, Clinical Investigation, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Project: Develop simple bedside methods to prevent missed strokes in the emergency department among patients with symptoms affecting vision.

Mentor: David Meyers, MD, FACEP

Funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

 

Julie Wright, MSNEd, RN

System Director Clinical Risk Management, Intermountain Healthcare.

Project: Identify the frequency of provider/patient communication failures that contribute to delay diagnosis events and develop a standardized approach to collecting this data set that can be replicated in other organizations for a multi-institutional collaborative project.

Mentor: Traber Giardina, PhD, Assistant Professor, Baylor College of Medicine

Twitter: @zeroharmRN

Alexa Miller

Founder and Consultant in Arts and Clinical Learning, Arts Practica

Project: Looking with Uncertainty: Investigating the learning opportunities at the intersection of art-viewing and masterful management of clinical uncertainty

Mentor: Leslie Fall, MD, Adjunct Professor of Pediatrics at the Geisel School of Medicine, and leading expert in medical education.

Twitter: @ArtsPractica

 

"The Fellowship in Diagnostic Excellence brought the support of incredible mentorship and community to a longstanding research project that needed sharpening and support. Diagnostic error is such a multifaceted, complex and dynamic problem and it was invaluable to my understanding of it and research to interact with such a wide range of researchers and practitioners through the fellowship."

-Alexa Miller

 

Caitlin Clancy, MD

Pulmonary and Critical Care Fellow, participating in the Center for Healthcare Improvement and Patient Safety (CHIPS) fellowship with the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

Project: Understanding and improving front-line provider clinical reasoning in situ using feedback and organization supported by the electronic health record

Mentor: Jennifer Myers, MD, professor of Clinical Research and director of Quality and Safety Education at Perelman. Her SIDM research mentor is Joseph Rencic, MD from Tufts University.

Funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

 

 

Kelly Gleason, RN, PhD

Assistant Professor, Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing

Project: Her proposed project is to leverage patient knowledge and experience to monitor and measure diagnostic error.

Mentors: Dan Berg and Welcome Jerde

Twitter: @KTG_RN

 

 

 

Vinita Parkash, MBBS

Associate Professor of Pathology, Yale School of Medicine

Project: Dr. Parkash is a pathologist interested in better developing a better classification and taxonomy for diagnostic errors in pathology.

Mentor: Mark Graber, MD, FACP

Recent Published Articles: Learning from tragedy: the Julia Berg story.

 

 

The SIDM fellowship has been transformative. Invaluable mentorship, networking with experts one would otherwise never have crossed paths with, and thoughtful discussions with like-minded peers are among the highlights of the year. Perhaps the most meaningful experience for me as a pathologist has been the opportunity to interact with patient families and other professionals who are essential to reducing diagnostic error.

-Vinita Parkash

 

Paul Bergl, MD

Critical Care Fellow, Medical College of Wisconsin.

Project: Investigating the role and impact of potentially preventable diagnostic errors in admissions to critical care units.

Mentor: Robert El-Kareh, MD, MS, MPH

 

 

 

"The primary benefit thus far has been the mentorship and networking opportunities. The fellowship provides an elevated recognition within SIDM, and accordingly I have felt really privileged to be able to regularly access the expertise of our members."
-Paul Bergl

 

Najlla Nassery, MD, MPH

Assistant Professor of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Project: Using large databases to develop measures for diagnostic safety, quality, and efficiency.

Mentor: Mark Graber, MD FACP

Recent Published Articles: Diagnostic performance dashboards: tracking diagnostic errors using big data

 

 

"The SIDM Diagnostic Fellowship has been an excellent experience. The exposure and mentorship that we have received from experts in the field has been invaluable. SIDM staff are dedicated to developing the next generation of researchers, and their enthusiasm is contagious." 
-Najlla Nassery

 

Thilan Wijesekera, MD, MHS

Assistant Professor, Dept. of Internal Medicine, Yale University School of Medicine

Project: Interested in designing and implementing diagnostic educational curricula.

Mentor: Andrew Olson, MD

Recent Published Articles: The Management Script: A Practical Tool for Teaching Management Reasoning; Reflection on Diagnosis and Diagnostic Errors: a Survey of Internal Medicine Resident and Attending Physicians

 

"From the moment I heard of my acceptance, the SIDM leadership actively reached out to put together a plan for my year that has wildly exceeded my educational, scholarly, and leadership goals."
-Thilan Wijesekera

Janice Kwan, MD, MPH

Graduate of the University of Toronto (MD), Harvard (MPH), and the VA Quality Scholar program (2013).

Project: Her fellowship has focused on two projects: 1) identifying and analyzing cases of diagnostic error reported through the database maintained by the Canadian Medical Protective Association, and 2) evaluating interventions to improve test result communication and management.

Mentor: Mark Graber, MD. FACP

 

"The SIDM fellowship has provided me with essential mentorship from top names in the field with great impact on my research career."
-Janice Kwan

 

Ava Liberman, MD, MA

A graduate of SUNY Downstate, Ava has completed a Neurology residency at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and a Vascular Neurology fellowship at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

Project: Her project focused on the misdiagnosis of stroke, aiming to develop an intervention that improves the timeliness and accuracy of stroke diagnosis in the ED.

Mentor: David Newman-Toker, MD, PhD

 

 

"The fellowship has been an invaluable experience. It has given me the opportunity to interact with a passionate community of like-minded individuals committed to improving diagnostic safety in medicine."
-Ava Liberman

 

Benji K. Mathews, MD, FACP, SFHM

HealthPartners and University of Minnesota Medical School

Project: He has completed advanced point of care ultrasound training through the American College of Chest Physicians, teaches with the Society of Hospital Medicine, and has been evaluating the impact of Point of Care Ultrasound technology in diagnostic patient safety.

Mentor: Karen Cosby, MD

Recent Published Articles: Point of Care Ultrasound Improves Shared Diagnostic Understanding Between Patients and Providers; The Design and Evaluation of the Comprehensive Hospitalist Assessment and Mentorship with Portfolios (CHAMP) Ultrasound Program; Decision - diagnosis: an introduction to diagnostic error and medical decision-making

 

"The fellowship provided a focused opportunity to develop in the field of diagnostic error, learning how to teach, reach, and impact others as a better-rounded clinician educator. In addition there are the intangibles: a guided mentorship that taught me about diagnostic error research, connecting it with my passion with bedside ultrasound as well as the camaraderie and marvelous interactions with the other fellows and experts within the diagnostic error community."
-Benji Mathews