Wayne Altman

Research/Areas of Interest

My research interests over the last decade have been focused in four areas: 1) Advancing patient wellness through the use of Group Visits; 2) Faculty Development and Physician Satisfaction; 3) Medical Education; and 4) Helping students care more effectively for patients with disability.

1) Group Visits

In 2009, I began Wellness Group visits at my practice. After five years, 130 patients have lost 2600 pounds and most of the patients are keeping the weight off. I have enjoyed collaborating with a number of medical students who have been instrumental helping to maintain, develop, and study the success of the group visits. We are in the midst of an IRB-approved research study now measuring the effect wellness groups have had on patient biometrics and behaviors.

I have collaborated with two colleagues to co-found a non-profit, WellnessCampaign.org. The goal of this enterprise is to disseminate information/skills and to promote support/accountability for the purpose of helping a broader audience achieve greater quality of life and wellness as manifested through decreased overweight, diabetes, cholesterol, and blood pressure.

2,3) Faculty Development/Physician Satisfaction and Medical Education

I completed a pilot research project in the CAP Course (Competency-based Apprenticeship in Primary care) that demonstrated that students who are more helpful to their preceptor are given better teaching as manifested through feedback and observation. As a result of this, we train the students how to be more helpful to their preceptors and we train the faculty how to delegate better and utilize this help.

Another aspect I have discovered that enhances the quality of teaching is the general job satisfaction our faculty. One novel technique to help with job satisfaction is the use of medical scribes. I have started research studying the effectiveness of medical scribes in the primary care setting. I will disseminate this information back to our community faculty to help them explore this possibility at their institution.

4) Caring for Patients with Disability

In 2001, I co-directed a program to create a standardized patient exercise to teach students about caring for patients with disability. This program was grant-funded for one year and then TUSM has continued to support this program indefinitely due to the curricular gap this fills. Students have appreciated this exercise because it is less artificial than typical standardized patient exercises as the patients have a true disability. Then, in collaboration with Dr. Ashley Duggan at Boston College, we studied various aspects of doctor-patient communication in the context of disability. Many of these findings were published and presented nationally. In 2011, we added to this program and trained a cohort of standardized patients with autism.