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Dr. Cizginer submitted her grant application as part of the 2019 Advance-K Scholar Career Development Program, while serving as Associate Professor of Surgery, Medicine, and Health Services, Policy & Practice at Brown University. She also served as Medical Director of Geriatric Surgery at The Miriam Hospital. The yearlong Advance-K program from the Brown Division of BioMed and Advance-CTR gives one-on-one and group training to junior investigators with the goal of submitting a successful NIH K or equivalent proposal by the conclusion of the program. The NIA K76 Beeson Award will help Dr. Cizginer further launch and establish her independent research career.
The Study: Optimizing care for older surgical patients: a theory-guided implementation science approach
As the Medical Director of Geriatric Surgery at The Miriam Hospital, Dr. Cizginer viewed first-hand the challenges associated with geriatric outcomes to surgery, in which risks of morbidity and mortality are increased. As a child, time spent in the studio with her father, an artist, led to her keen observation of patterns and how one small brush-stroke can change the entire canvas. Similarly, Dr. Cizginer observed that small adjustments to care pre-and-post surgery can positively change and inform health outcomes for geriatric patients significantly, while simultaneously resulting in reduced costs.
Dr. Cizginer’s study will use implementation science to develop strategies to increase uptake of evidence-based standards introduced by the American College of Surgeons (ACS) Geriatric Surgery Verification Program (GSV) designed to improve geriatric surgical patient outcomes, and then test those strategies.