Julie K. Johnson, MSPH, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Chicago and the Director of Research for the American Board of Medical Specialties in Evanston, Illinois. Dr. Johnson's career interests involve building a series of collaborative relationships around improving the quality and safety of health care through teaching, research, and clinical improvement, with the ultimate goal to translate theory into practice while generating new knowledge about the best models for improving care.
Dr. Johnson has a master's degree in public health from the University of North Carolina and a PhD in evaluative clinical sciences from Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH. The area of focus for her doctoral research was building an understanding of the structure, process, and outcomes of the clinical microsystem - the small group of providers and staff that care for a defined population of patients.
Dr. Johnson uses qualitative methods, including focus groups, interviews, and observational studies, to better understand processes of care. Since joining the faculty at University of Chicago, she has used qualitative methods to study errors in ambulatory pediatric settings, to conduct observations in pediatric cardiac surgery, to observe how medical teams function on inpatient medicine rounds, and to improve hand-offs of inpatient care.
One project that is currently underway is "Understanding the Effect of the Chronic Care Collaborative on Teams and Teamwork". This project is part of the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC) Chronic Care Collaborative, which aims to bring together 24 academic health centers to work on integrating the chronic care model in patient care and medical education. Dr. Johnson's role with the Collaborative is to conduct a qualitative evaluation of participating teams to further our understanding of how the Collaborative experience effects the work of the primary care team. Toward this goal, she developed the "Electronic Team Survey" which is conducted via a web-based tool housed at the University of Chicago to study the relationship between affect and creativity at work.
As the Director of Research at the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS), Dr. Johnson is co-leading a project to design and develop a web-based patient safety education and improvement module that will be available to certified physicians from all twenty-four medical specialty boards to meet their maintenance of certification requirements. This project will be a nationally recognized learning module for patient safety.
Dr. Johnson is a member of the Board of Examiners for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and is an Associate Editor of Quality and Safety in Health Care.
