• The Patient Safety Education Project (PSEPTM)
• Developing a Nested Whole-Person-Care Guide
• Education in Palliative and End-of-life Care (EPECTM)
• EPEC-O for Patients and Caregivers
• Patient-Centered Safety in Long-Term Care Facilities
• Education in Palliative and End-of-life Care for Long-Term Care
• Comprehensive PRO Management for Oncology Practice
• Assessing Multidimensional Pain in Gero-Oncology: A Clinical Infometrics Approach
• Integrating Rehabilitation and Palliation in Cancer Care
• Health Safety: Causes of Adverse Health Events Among Community-Dwelling Elders
• Polypharmacy and Medication Non-Adherence among Elderly Veterans Administration (VA) Patients
• Mentored Research Scientist Development Award
• Biological and Self Reported Measures of Psychological Stress among Informal Caregivers of Patients with Prostate Cancer
• Breast Cancer and The Effect on the Family
• Interactions Between Childhood Illness and the Family
• Comparison Study on Distance Learning Approaches

The Patient Safety Education Project (PSEPTM)

combines two high-quality models to advance a national and international patient safety education-dissemination agenda.
First, the U.S. developed a high-impact, conference-based education disemmination project. Using a curriculum driven, train-the-trainer approach grounded in adult learning theory and embedded into social structures to facilitate behavior change, the model has been evaluated and found to be unprecedentedly successful. This model will be used for dissemination. This model has been used successfully for the Education in Palliative and End-of-life Care (EPEC) Project.

Second, Australia created a national consensus framework for patient safety from which diverse groups could create teaching materials for all levels of health care workers. This framework will be used as a starting point to define core patient safety content. In addition, PSEP collaborates with many patient safety groups throughout the United States, Australia, and beyond, and rather than recreate them, will draw on their excellent contributed materials whenever possible to create a consensus-based Core Safety Curriculum. This Core Safety Curriculum will drive the dissemination of patient safety practices. For more information, please visit the PSEP web site.

Developing a Nested Whole-Person-Care Guide: Screening & Evaluation Steps

Linda Emanuel, MD, PhD is the lead investigator on the project “Developing a Needs at the End-of-life Screening Tool (NEST) Whole-Person-Care Guide,” which is funded for two years from 2005-2007 by the American Cancer Society. Other Buehler Center faculty members involved in this project are Chih-Hung Chang, PhD; Joshua Hauser, MD; and Whitney Witt, PhD, MPH. The NEST tool is an unfolding questionnaire with four themes - Needs of a social nature; Existential needs; Symptoms; and Therapeutic matters. The goals of the study are to apply the NEST tool to: better detect patients' care needs; better align the patient's and clinician's goals of care; and bring whole-person palliative care to oncology patients. Interviews with oncology patients and their caregivers occur at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

Education in Palliative and End-of-life Care

The Education in Palliative and End-of-life Care (EPEC) Project is an initiative to provide training to health care professionals in end-of-life and palliative care. The EPEC Project conducts train-the-trainer and professional development conferences, provides extensive educational materials, as well an online learning adaptation of the complete EPEC Curriculum for Continuing Medical Education (CME) credit. For more information, please visit the EPEC web site.

EPEC-O for Patients and Caregivers: Motivating and Coordinating Survivor and Caregiver Education with Health Care Provider Education

Linda Emanuel, MD, PhD is the lead investigator of a Lance Armstrong Foundation funded project to create, beta test and refine materials for a motivational workshop that will demonstrate how survivors and their families can take on a positive, proactive role and relationship to their cancer and health care. The materials will include a motivational trigger tape to engage the participants’ enthusiasm and openness to change, curriculum content materials, and informational brochures about goals of care.

Patient-Centered Safety in Long-Term Care Facilities

Linda Emanuel, MD, PhD received a grant from the Commonwealth Fund to help foster collegial and intellectual links among education and research leaders in patient safety, social change, and long-term care and to develop a research agenda to improve safety in long-term care settings. This grant supported a one-day working group meeting, entitled “Patient-Centered Safety in Long-Term Care Facilities,” in December 2005 in New York.  Buehler faculty members Denys Lau, PhD and Celia Berdes, PhD, MSPH also participated in this meeting.

Education in Palliative and End-of-life Care for Long-Term Care (EPEC-LTC)

Celia Berdes, PhD, MSPH is the primary investigator for "Education in Palliative and End-of-life Care for Long-Term Care (EPEC-LTC)." The project will develop and test a novel method to assess the need for person-centered/ palliative care in nursing homes. The results of the needs assessment will be used to create an adaptation of the existing EPEC Curriculum, for use in the long-term care setting. This project includes Buehler Center faculty members Linda Emanuel, MD, PhD, Chih-Hung Chang, PhD, Joshua Hauser, MD, and Michael Preodor, MD, FACP.

Comprehensive PRO Management for Oncology Practice

Chih-Hung Chang, PhD is a co-investigator for the project, “Comprehensive PRO Management for Oncology Practice.” Patient-reported outcomes (PRO) data for cancer are not routinely collected and utilized at oncology clinics due to technological and logistical constraints and lack of knowledge in interpreting, monitoring and responding to such data. This project aims to design a PRO management system for both oncology clinicians and patients by integrating patient-reported outcomes information, clinically relevant information, evidence-based medicine, and technology and methodology to provide on-demand and individualized clinical guidelines and treatment decision trees to improve cancer patients’ care.

Comparison Study on Distance Learning Approaches

The principal investigator on this project is Joshua M. Hauser, MD. This study, funded by the National Cancer Institute, seeks to build an interactive, online, distance-learning program to educate physicians in the EPEC palliative care curriculum. Online learning is becoming increasingly popular, as it allows physicians and other health care providers to learn at home and as their schedule allows. However, little is known about the amount of knowledge that is gained through online learning versus the amount of knowledge gained through a traditional, conference-based learning style. After the interactive course is built, this study will enroll healthcare professionals to participate in either the standard EPEC web course, the new interactive EPEC course, or the “Become an EPEC Trainer” conference. Because the EPEC Curriculum will be taught to all three groups, the project team will be able to discern which method of teaching is most effective. The results of this study will help guide future medical education courses so that health care professionals receive the most from their continuing education.