UIC-Christ Research Curriculum

History  |  Curriculum  |  Recent/Ongoing Activities

History

Dr. Kevin Sherin, the program director, was actively involved in research and other scholarly activity when he was a faculty member in the early 80's during the Rush-Christ years. Dr. Kevin Shannon is the director of research at UIC-Christ. Dr. James Sinacore is the statistician on many of our projects.

"Our objective is to strengthen the specialty of Family Medicine and to enhance the quality of medical care."

Curriculum

Required curricular components include: 1) presentation of two "grand rounds"during the final two years of training -- one a patient-oriented case presentation, and the other a scholarly topical presentation; 2) present a "journal club" critical literature article review once each of the last two years of training; 3) work with two classmates to complete a "senior community medicine project" during the final year of training -- this involves researching a community and creating and measuring the impact of a small community intervention, and then presenting the results to the department.

"There are several academic projects ongoing at UIC-Christ"

...HITS

...preventive health

...firearm safety

...venous thrombo- embolism."

Recent / Ongoing Activities

The problem of domestic violence is foremost in the minds of many patients, and it is often unrecognized by health providers. Drs. Sherin, Zitter, Bardwell, Li, Shakil and Shannon are all involved in the series of "HITS" research phases. "HITS" is a four-item instrument used to screen for domestic violence. Please see "HITS: A Short Domestic Violence Screening Tool for Use in a Family Practice Setting," Family Medicine, July-August 1998, pp. 508-512. Recently HITS Phase III was completed, and Phase IV is in the planning phase.

One of our new chief residents, Dr. Amit Joshi was recently published in Neuropsychopharmacology 1998 (18:1), "Dopamine Receptor Antagonists Fail to Prevent Induction of Cocaine Sensitization."

Drs. Kevin Shannon and Stephen Bennett are involved in research into the most effective means of training primary care residents in preventive services, a study which is in data analysis at this time: "A Dynamic Preventive Health Curriculum for Primary Care Residency Training."

Dr. Sangili Chandran has studied screening for home firearm safety, and presented last year at the Nesset Forum with our former faculty development fellow, Amer Shakil, MD.

Dr. Jacqueline Bardwell presented HITS Phase III at the national Society of Teachers of Family Medicine meeting this year.

Dr. Shannon and our chief resident Amit Joshi are researching venous thromboembolism prophylaxis for the development of a hospital-wide clinical guideline.

Outside the program, Dr. Kevin Sherin lectures on public health, primary care, and prevention topics; Dr. Bardwell lectures on women's health issues; Dr. Kevin Shannon lectures on Evidence-Based Medicine, clinical epidemiology, prevention, and depression; and Dr. Chandran lectures on sports medicine topics.