Meredith C. Masel, PhD, MSW is the Director of the Oliver Center for Patient Safety & Quality Healthcare at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB Health). A background in social work and social epidemiology led Dr. Masel to her current post where she is a campus champion for improved communication among patients and providers. In addition to running the “Taking the Message and the Medicine Home” program which encourages patients to tape record and keep their clinical encounters, Dr. Masel teaches over 400 medical residents each year on interpersonal and communication skills to improve patient outcomes. She has been selected to offer a similar program to nurses across the academic health science center on the topic of incivility in the workplace and the impact on patient care.

Other work spearheaded by Dr. Masel includes piloting the Safe & Sound program created by PartnerHealth, LLC, creating a division of Shared Decision Making modeled after the work at Dartmouth-Hitchcock, and chairing the UTMB Patient Education Committee. Future work in the Oliver Center includes offering to patients recordings of discharge instructions to investigate whether or not a recording helps patients and/or care partners to feel more in control and confident during their post-hospital journey.

For this project, Dr. Masel will facilitate the case study at the UTMB location. Dr. Masel is also helping coordinate the testing of ORALS in the UTMB Family Medicine Clinic.

Dr. Ryan has developed his own system of audio recording clinical visits with manual annotation of recordings. Dr. Ryan is the Director of the Ryan Family Practice in Ludington, Michigan. He is a key advisor on the project and is assisting the team in facilitating the case study and visit dates at the Ryan Family Practice. He describes himself as an explorer of the subtle flavors of human behaviors when mixed lovingly with technology. Over the past decade, he has focused on enhancing the aromatic qualities of health information in small spaces.

Dr. Porter is a neurosurgeon based at the Barrow Institute in Phoenix, Arizona. He has created a video recording service for patients called The Medical Memory, a system that ten clinicians across the Institute currently use with their patients. Dr. Porter’s role in the project involves facilitating the case study of the Barrow Institute.

Sue is the Program Director for the Center for Shared Decision Making at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in New Hampshire, USA.  In this role she helps implement the use of shared decision making tools and processes, oversees management of a service learning program that trains student and community volunteers to support patients, and provides decision support counseling to patients. Previously Sue practiced as a genetic counselor for over 20 years in the areas of pediatrics, adult onset genetic disorders, and prenatal diagnosis.

Sue earned her BS in biology at the University of New Hampshire and her MS in Medical Genetics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  She is licensed as a Genetic Counselor in New Hampshire.