Research in the Janet Record Lab focuses on medical education and patient-centered care. We’re currently developing a curriculum for internal medicine residents in the inpatient general medicine service setting. The curriculum teaches residents to use hand-carried ultrasound for imaging the inferior vena cava to assess volume status.

Research in the Rosalyn Stewart Lab focuses on medical education and curriculum development; ambulatory medicine; community outreach and advocacy; health outcomes; and preventive medicine. Topics of published studies include the administration of vaccinations, care quality of pediatric sickle-cell disease patients and the improvement of transitional care to reduce hospital readmission rates.

Research in the Leonard Feldman Lab is focused on consult medicine, high-value care and medical education, including resident training and online curriculum. Past studies include integrating lessons on respect and courtesy toward patients into the training of residents and the impact of including the cost of medical procedures when residents ordered tests.

Work in the Sarah Clever Lab focuses on medical education, patient-provider communication and the role of shared decision-making in patient recovery. We recently examined the ethical dilemmas of caring for “influential” patients whose attributes and characteristics (for example, social status, occupation, or position), coupled with their behavior, have the potential to significantly affect a clinician's judgment or actions.

Research in the Sanjay Desai Lab focuses primarily on clinical outcomes in survivors of critical illnesses, such as acute lung injury. We also investigate techniques to improve graduate medical education and are conducting a clinical trial on the comparative effectiveness of models that optimize patient safety and resident education. Our research examines factors such as residency work-hour reform, hand hygiene practices and the use of etiquette-based communication.

Research in the Deborah Schwengel Lab focuses on perioperative care of pediatric patients with obstructive sleep apnea as well as anesthetic care for patients undergoing ethanol embolization of vascular malformations. Our team also explores topics within graduate medical education. In this field, our work has involved evaluating both an educational curriculum and a disaster preparedness curriculum for anesthesiology residents. We also have a long-standing interest in international adoption medicine.

Research in the Michael Melia Lab focuses primarily on nocardia infections, Lyme disease and hepatitis C. Our studies have included key topics such as risk factors for incident infections during hepatitis C treatment, racial differences in eligibility for hepatitis C treatment and misdiagnosis of Lyme arthritis using the Borrelia burgdorferi immunoblot testing method. We also have a longstanding interest in medical education and work on curriculum to improve the quality of education for medical students and interns.

Directed by Debraj “Raj” Mukherjee, MD, MPH, the laboratory focuses on improving access to care, reducing disparities, maximizing surgical outcomes, and optimizing quality of life for patients with brain and skull base tumors.

The laboratory achieves these aims by creating and analyzing institutional and national databases, developing and validating novel patient-centered quality of life instruments, leveraging machine learning and artificial intelligence platforms to risk-stratify vulnerable patient populations, and designing novel surgical trials to push the boundaries of neurosurgical innovation.

Our research also investigates novel approaches to improve neurosurgical medical education including studying the utility of video-based surgical coaching and the design of new operative instrumentation.

The Marie Hanna Lab conducts research on key topics within the field of anesthesiology. Our interests include both regional and obstetric anesthesia as well as patient-controlled analgesia, pain measurement, post-operative pain and acute pain management. Examples of our work include researching whether a surgery patient’s perception of pain control affects his or her satisfaction level and a comparison of air and liquid for use in the loss-of-resistance technique during labor epidurals.

The Timothy Niessen Lab studies patient outcomes in the ICU. We are particularly interested in the effects of sleep quality, delirium transitions and sedation on the improvement of intensive care patients. Our investigators also focus on the practices of internal medicine interns, studying the variability of hand washing hygiene, etiquette-based communication and time spent in direct and indirect patient care. We have also studied the onset of myelopathy as a result of B12 deficiency from long-term colchicine treatment and recreational nitrous oxide use.