Educational Scholarship

This project aims to integrate disability justice and anti-ableism into the Ethics/Professionalism/Health Humanities thread to augment the disability-related education of UVA medical students. Through developing and teaching a two-week CHHE elective, we will offer a robust look at the history of disability from scholarly works, film, memoir, graphic novels, and fine arts inviting students to critically evaluate and compare social vs. medical models of health through an ethics lens, and use our experience to determine, along with other UME leaders, which aspects to integrate into the core curriculum. Through interdisciplinary collaboration between a physician-educator and a local artist and patient advocate, this project offers a unique opportunity to engage students in exploring creative approaches to clinical practice and self-care. The long-term goals of this scholarly educational effort are to expand applications of the Disability Justice framework in medicine while encouraging the advancement of innovative arts and humanities-based educational and research efforts, particularly in the relatively new field of graphic medicine.

Authors: Nao Hagiwara, PhD (PI) Gabrielle Adams, PhD, Jazmin Brown-Iannuzzi, PhD, Wendy Cohn, PhD, Sarah N. Dalrymple, MD, Emerson Do Bú, PhD, Wen You, PhD, and Jamie Zoellner, PhD

PI’s Department: Public Health Sciences

Despite increasing investment in anti-racism training among many U.S. educational institutions and organizations that train healthcare providers, there is a lack of evidence-based training materials aimed at actually improving patient outcomes. Through the project funded by the CEE Scholarly Innovation, our interdisciplinary research team aims to develop and test training materials grounded in well-validated theories. The long-term goal of this research program is to mitigate disparities in patient-provider communication quality and ultimately improve overall health outcomes for a diverse range of patients.

Authors: Laura Homewood, MD (PI), Leigh Cantrell, MD

PI’s Department: OB/GYN

This project aims to improve the surgical education of OB/GYN residents at UVA by implementing an innovative surgical coaching curriculum. The curriculum involves dedicated review of residents pre-recorded, de-identified surgical video and incorporates evidence-based methods of coaching from a trained, expert surgical coach. Participants will receive both subjective and objective evaluations and feedback on their performance over the course of the year. Despite falling surgical numbers, gaining and maintaining competency remains crucial across various surgical approaches. The study aims to improve OB/GYN resident education by maximizing each surgical experience.

Authors: Arthi Venkat, MD, MS (PI), Tara McGehee, MD, Michael Krause, MD, PhD

PI’s Department: Ophthalmology

Ophthalmology continues to be one of the least diverse subspecialties in medicine, which is particularly salient as severe visual impairment has been shown to disproportionately affect groups impacted by particular social determinants of health, including self-identification as a racial or ethnic minority. It is therefore important to ensure that assessment for residency positions in Ophthalmology is done in a manner that is inclusive. In a world where machine learning platforms are increasingly being used in medical education and assessment, careful evaluation of such platforms for inherent bias due to the way in which they are trained is increasingly important. Our study proposes the comparison of AI-selected residency applicants for interview to those selected by humans to evaluate the criteria by which each entity selects applicants, with particular attention to the percentage of applicants selected who are underrepresented in medicine (URIM), background, accolades, and letters of recommendation.