As an academic general
internist and medical educator on the faculty of the David Geffen School of
Medicine at UCLA, Carole has studied patient-centered communication,
interprofessional teamwork, physician worklife, evidence-based medicine, and
relationship-centered leadership. She has spent much of her career caring for
underserved patients and helping others learn to approach society’s most
vulnerable groups with respect, humility and compassion.
Carole is a
clinician/educator. She has practiced and taught inpatient and ambulatory medicine.
She has held clinical and educational leadership positions at the Veterans
Administration, academic medical centers, community teaching hospitals, a large
health maintenance organization, and a federally qualified health center. She
has long been interested in the effects of the work environment on relationships
with patients and clinician well-being. In a variety of clinical settings, she
has led studies of burnout, satisfaction and related organizational
characteristics. She then guided clinicians and staff to develop processes and
programs to promote workplace changes, personal-professional balance, and team resilience.
Curriculum development
has been a career-long avocation. Carole has been active with national
presentations and publications in curricula: evidence-based medicine for
community faculty, cardiac physical examination, relationship-centered
leadership for medical students, interprofessional teamwork, and trainee
well-being. She has studied primary care teamwork and developed a useful conceptual
model for training, assessing, and improving team performance. Most recently
she led a team of clinicians to develop an interprofessional training program
for six different health professions, in a patient-centered medical home caring
for homeless Veterans.
As a mother of a young
doctor, Carole would like to dedicate the remainder of her career to making the
worklife of the next generation more fulfilling and sustainable, and guiding
the organizations of the future to shape that.