A highly innovative project at Jesse Brown VA Medical Center, in which Veterans volunteer to audio record their own visits so that a team of trained audio coders can identify opportunities to improve the care they receive, is looking for volunteers at both the undergraduate and graduate student level. Volunteers will have two roles:
1) Assisting with the distribution and collection of audio recorders in the waiting room. This includes discussing the project with interested patients.
2) Handing out and collecting surveys to patients who participate to learn about their experience participating.
This project is based on over a decade of research on “contextual errors” which occur when a member of the health care team (doctor, nurse, pharmacist) overlooks the life challenges patients face that are often critical to address when planning effective care. These errors are identified and potentially prevented using the patient collected audio recording method.
We are looking for volunteers who have the following characteristics: they (a) are comfortable in a crowded waiting room talking with Veterans, (b) are excellent communicators and listeners, and sensitive to the emotions of others, (c) are highly reliable, and (d) have an interest in the topic of providing care that is personalized and adapted to patients’ individual needs and circumstances.
Volunteering is flexible and can occur any days during clinic hours (9am-4pm) Mon-Friday, during the year or summer. Volunteers go through an orientation at Jesse Brown and then the project team trains them. Participating in the survey component will require completing online modules to get certified to be on a research team, and assist with research tasks, beginning with handing out and collecting patient surveys. Those with an even higher level of interest can learn to listen to audio recording and code the data.
To learn more, please contact Dr. Saul J. Weiner, MD at sweiner@uic.edu.
