Internal Medicine

Current Programs

Community Initiatives and Upcoming Events

  • Alopecia Walk 

THINQ volunteered at the National Alopecia Areata Foundation’s 2024 Walk for Alopecia in collaboration with UCLA Health! Learn more about the foundation here. 

  • Annual Case Study Competition 

Our annual Case Competition took place on Saturday, March 8th from 9AM to 1PM at the Tamkin Auditorium in Ronald Reagan Medical Center. Sign-ups for participants have closed, but please join our mailing list or reach out to [email protected] if you’re interested in competing next year!

  • Pre-Health Guidebook

Check out our frequently updated Pre-Health Guidebook to learn more about pre-health organizations at UCLA!  

Research Initiatives

  1. The Role of Human Scribing and its Effectiveness in Alleviating Physician Burnout
    • This project aims to explore the root causes and prevalence of burnout within healthcare systems. Our objective is to evaluate the effectiveness of human scribing programs in mitigating burnout, enhancing productivity, and supporting long-term cost sustainability.
  2. Nursing Recommendations to Improve Medical Reconciliation within the Discharge and Care Transition
    • This project aims to develop interventions to improve the medication reconciliation and discharge process while understanding the barriers nurses face during these processes. Proper medical reconciliation practices can aid in preventing adverse drug events and improve efficiency of discharge and care transition.
  3. The Current State of Interpreter Use in Healthcare
    • Around 29.6 million individuals in the U.S. have limited English proficiency, facing persistent barriers to equitable healthcare despite legal protection. This project explores challenges in meeting federal language access mandates, the operational impact of inadequate language services, and the potential of telehealth to reduce disparities.
  4. AI Driven Medical Scribing and its Effectiveness in the Clinical Setting
    • Integrating AI-driven systems like Natural Language Processing (NLP) in medical documentation practices could revolutionize how patient records and clinical notes are generated. The goal of this project is to determine the impact of AI technologies, such as NLP and Automatic Speech Recognition, on clinical note generation and discuss their implications for the healthcare system.
  5. UCLA Next Day Clinic (NDC)
    • NDC is an initiative that aims to improve patient care and safety in the Emergency Department (ED) while maximizing cost effectiveness. The NDC team identifies patients in the ED who would normally be admitted for low-acuity conditions and diverts them to a high-acuity clinic the following day called the Next Day Clinic. This helps decompress the ED and allow for improvements in quality of care and ED efficiency.
  6. IMPACT Pilot Program
    • Physician burnout, partly driven by high volumes of in-basket messages, has been linked to poor teamwork and increased stress. To address this, DoM Quality’s IMPACT project uses RNs and NPs to pre-screen messages, reducing the burden on physicians and improving wellness. THINQ is conducting a mixed-methods analysis of the program’s outcomes, combining a literature review and data analysis to evaluate its effectiveness and identify areas for improvement.
  7. Evolved Human Scribes Perspectives Project
    • The use of dictation technology in the U.S. has grown rapidly with the recent expansion of AI systems. These changes pose serious threats to the current duties of scribes, a job currently vital for undergraduate and recently graduated pre-health students. This study will interview current scribes and clinic managers in order to discover potential areas of involvement that the traditional scribe can take on in order to ensure that their role remains essential to the clinic.
  8. Post Discharge Pilot Program
    • Post-hospital follow-up visits reduce readmission rates, with greater effectiveness when the physician has an existing relationship with the patient. UCLA data and broader literature suggests that follow-up visits are more likely to occur and be effective under these conditions. This project explores these protective factors by having THINQ students observe and compare follow-up visits between UCLA primary care physicians and recently discharged patients.
  9. UCLA Bridge Clinic Project
    • Access to methadone treatment is crucial for opioid recovery, but inconsistent clinic information creates barriers for patients. This project aims to map LA-area methadone clinics, including intake hours, requirements, and UCLA HMO acceptance, to improve access and streamline referrals. By directly contacting clinics to verify and update information, the project seeks to improve patient access and streamline referrals for more effective treatment.
  10. Peer Coaching Program
    • Physician burnout significantly impacts patient safety, professionalism, and satisfaction, with high replacement costs and mixed results from current interventions. Coaching has shown long-term promise in improving physician well-being and reducing burnout. This study aims to identify the types and goals of coaching programs in healthcare and clarify their definitions to help medical professionals determine which coaching type best suits their needs.

Past Research Initiatives

  1. Intersectionality Scoping Review: Explore the impact of social identities (i.e., sex/gender, age, race/ethnicity) on physician-nurse relations.
  2. Discharge Planning and Care Transitions: Generate best practice recommendations to improve discharge planning that can lead to higher patient satisfaction, better understanding of care plans, and reduction in readmission rates.
  3. Clinical Topics: Vizient Lab projects to 1) Prevent Hypoglycemic events in hospitalized patients receiving insulin; 2) Optimize INRs to not exceed 5.0 when prescribing Warfarin in the hospital; 3) Decrease inappropriate blood transfusions for patients with hemoglobin >9 if not bleeding; 4) Draw lactic acid within 12 hours of patients presenting with Severe Sepsis.

THINQ Committee Presentations and Fellowship Training

  • Social Justice: Presentations on an important healthcare issue from an intersectional lens.
  • Journal Club and THINQ Tank: Discuss literature on specific areas of concern (i.e., team communication, interdisciplinary rounds, clinician burnout, etc.) within the healthcare system to brainstorm potential solutions in groups.
  • Leadership Development: Courses and training on professional development, such as guest speaker events, resume building, and personality quizzes.
  • Research Boot Camp: Workshops to develop research skills pertaining to PubMed Searching, integrative reviews, and research presentations.

Shadowing

  • Currently, we have rotations in inpatient medicine, geriatric units, and outpatient internal medicine resident clinics at UCLA Santa Monica Geriatrics, UCLA Westwood Internal Medicine clinic, and UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center wards.