Basic Science of Care
MS-2

August 26, 2009 – December 16, 2009
12 sessions

Course Director
G. Daniel Martich, MD
Professor
Department of Critical Care Medicine
martichgd@upmc.edu

Course Director
John P. Williams, MD
Peter & Eva Safar Professor and Chair
Department of Anesthesiology
williamsjp@anes.upmc.edu

Course Description

This course is a first exposure to issues surrounding health care delivery at the personal, hospital, and system levels.

The goals of the course are for students to:

1. integrate theories, principles, and techniques from the physical, behavioral, and social sciences into an interdisciplinary approach to excellent health care delivery.
2. identify and describe why safe, effective, evidence-based care is often not delivered in the current health-care environment and develop viable solutions to the resulting problems.
3. identify the structural and economic constraints that inhibit the delivery of excellent and efficient care.
4. recognize the role of information systems in improving the delivery of cost-effective, error-free care.
5. understand, develop, and implement the skills necessary to practice collaboratively with health care professionals from other disciplines.

The 50 faculty in this course are drawn from departments in all six Health Sciences Schools: Medicine, Dental Medicine, Health and Rehabilitative Sciences, Nursing, Pharmacy, and Public Health. Included among the faculty are the Deans of all six Health Sciences schools, Department Chairs, and officers, directors, and counsel from area medical and policy centers.

Educational Methods

The first 6 weeks of the course focus on the determination, management, and assessment of outpatient experiences. The final 6 weeks focus on the inpatient experience. For both the outpatient and the inpatient halves of the course, the first 3 of the 6 weeks are didactic in nature, introduce problems encountered in the arena, and address issues of quality, safety, and technology. For one week, a group of Deans from the schools mentioned above discuss how these issues affect their fields around a specific topic. The final 2 weeks present Care Delivery Workshops (CDW), which are similar in content to PBL, but are designed to follow a somewhat different format. Other approaches are used, as well.

	Lectures		Care delivery workshop exercises		Expert interviews
	Demonstrations		Faculty/health care staff panels

Evaluation

Evaluation for this course is based on class participation (50%); participation in Care Delivery Workshop case exercises (30%); and on a multiple-choice, open book, final exam (20%).

Grading: This course comprises 100% of the grade for the Physician, Patient and Society Block, Section 3. The block section is graded Honors, Satisfactory, Unsatisfactory.

Faculty Note

David Eibling, MD, a recipient of the Kenneth E. Schuit Award and the Clinical Golden Apple Award, is also a member of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine Academy of Master Educators.