Johns Hopkins CIM Seminar - Because the Future of Medicine is Not the Past: Inventing an Academy for Next Generation CIM Scholars

Jack Iwashyna is a critical care physician and health services researcher whose research seeks to understand the context of critical illness, both how critical illness influences a patient’s life course, and how the organizational environment influences the effectiveness of the care that a patient receives. He aims to improve long-term health outcomes and quality of life for survivors of critical illness through social and health safety net integration.

Dr. Iwashyna’s innovative research has provided evidence of the long-term impact of severe acute infections in the United States, showing that patients who survive sepsis often have enduring cognitive and functional deficits that last for years and result in difficulties completing basic activities in daily living, and that survivors are at higher risk for re-admission to the hospital and death. Iwashyna has worked with an international coalition to reframe advice on inpatient treatment of sepsis to incorporate explicit discussions of supporting family members and including neighborhood context and financial resources as key components in recovery. He currently is working on identifying modifiable social and contextual factors that shape functional recovery after serious illness, and investigating the roles of employment, financial toxicity, and caregiver burden as both outcomes of and contributors to recovery.