The proposed K01 Mentored Research Scientist Award outlines a program of training and research focusing on the epidemiology and prevention of medical errors in the treatment of patients with serious mental illness. The candidate proposes to gain the skills and knowledge necessary to become an independent mental health services researcher with expertise in medical errors in behavioral health settings. The research agenda will consist of three related research projects. The first project will be an intensive qualitative assessment of the factors that underlie medical errors for patients with mental illnesses. The second project will be conducted in conjunction with the Center of Excellence for Patient Safety Research and Practice at the University of Pennsylvania. It will examine hospital workplace stressors and physician reactions to those stressors to begin to understand factors associated with medication errors that occur for inpatients with mental illness. The third project will develop and test a medical chart abstraction form to measure and describe medical errors in the psychiatric inpatient setting. Together, these research studies will provide empirical data to develop a conceptual model of the common types and causes of medical errors in patients with mental illness. The educational component of the program will provide advanced training in four general areas: 1) clinical treatment of patients with mental illness; 2) qualitative methods; 3) system design; and 4) organizational behavior. This training will be obtained via mentoring by Drs. Phyllis Solomon and J. Sanford Schwartz, formal didactic coursework, and off-site seminars and conferences. The goal of the educational program is to increase the methodological rigor of the proposed research and place the findings in a broader theoretical context.
| Bressi, Sara K; Marcus, Steven C; Solomon, Phyllis L (2006) The impact of psychiatric comorbidity on general hospital length of stay. Psychiatr Q 77:203-9 |
| Coyne, James C; Marcus, Steven C (2006) Health disparities in care for depression possibly obscured by the clinical significance criterion. Am J Psychiatry 163:1577-9 |
