Congratulations to Karlie Haug, MD, who recently received a Resident Research Scholarship from the American College of Surgeons (ACS)!
Dr. Haug researches clarity in patient communication, focusing on the effectiveness of the “Best Case/Worst Case” decision tool for nephrologists. This tool, developed by Gretchen Schwarze, MD, and colleagues in the Patient Preferences Project, helps physicians engage patients who have kidney disease in joint deliberation about their treatment options. A nationwide network of nephrologists is enrolled in the study, and they send data on their experience using the decision tool to Dr. Haug for analysis.
A fourth year resident in general surgery, Dr. Haug says working on a project like this is part of the reason she applied to the University of Wisconsin Department of Surgery to continue her education after medical school at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.
“I’ve been interested in ethics and the liberal arts side of surgery since the get-go,” Dr. Haug said. “Advancing the field overall is a nice complement to individual patient care.”
Dr. Haug is exploring surgery ethics not only through this research project, but also through an ethics fellowship at the University of Chicago, where she lived for two months this past summer and now commutes for weekly lectures.
Dr. Haug is one of just six recipients of the Resident Research Scholarship, which was one of nine categories in this year’s ACS Foundation 2021-2022 awardee class. She is the first Wisconsin Surgery resident to win the award , which will provide $60,000 in funding to her research over the next two years.