Behavioral Science

Jean C. Wiese, Ph.D.

(University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, 1971)

107 Medical Behavioral Science Building
Phone: (859) 323-5573
e-mail: jwiese@uky.edu

Research Description

Dr. Wiese's research is in raising the awareness of health professionals to the wide spectrum of varied but logical human behavior; thereby, making these professionals keenly appreciative of cultural differences. She believes that the Department of Behavioral Science's required program makes the difference between a thoroughly trained and technically competent, professional, and a professional of equal technical skills but who is also finely attuned to the psychosocial experience of his/her patients. The result is a consummate medical professional in whom the individual needs of his/her patients will resonate.

2011 Accomplishments

In May, Dr. Wiese presented a paper, Use of contract learning in a doctoring course, at the Society for General Internal Medicine in Phoenix. All of her endeavors this year are related to the department’s teaching mission, specifically nurturing and initiating liaisons with clinical settings to provide selective sites for our medical students as well as orchestrating two workshops for the ICM Week activities, all within the context of the year-long Introduction to Clinical Medicine (ICM) course.  The Bluegrass Community Health Center offered our students a unique situation for our students to see cross-cultural family medicine at its best.  This clinic has a patient population which is predominantly Latino and lower income, and with Limited English Proficiency (LEP). The clinic is also headed by people from EKU. One of the most important facets of this experience was the opportunity to work with LEP patients, either utilizing a student’s own bilingualism or communicating through an interpreter.  Alas, with the advent of a new clinical director of this clinic, a UK Family Practice Physician, we lost the privilege of this site as an SCE for our students.  She saw the loss of this site as catastrophic since it was the sole venue in which our students could experience the unique complications of interpreter use.  This triggered a search for a new SCE venue. A vastly different clinical bridge that she has been able to establish is a selective in the UK burn unit, through Dr. Leslie Wong.  Our students often only see severe burns in an ER setting where they are stabilized and admitted – lost to the student’s view.  In this selective, students can see the excruciating scope of treatment and rehabilitation from severe burns. There is definitely no “magic bullet” in this specialty. It is definitely not for the faint of heart – but it brings into stark reality why survivors of severe burns are said to suffer “chronic PTSD”, and why dedicated psychological care is a crucial component to the healing. Our feedback is that the students are having a wonderful learning experience – stressful but fascinating – with Dr. Wong.  The final setting where she has built a firm bridge for our students is the Pediatric Hospice setting through Mary Kay Fedorchuk, MSW, the director. Ms. Fedorchuk has organized the SCE so that right after the Winter break she and Mrs. Armstrong – another MSW - have an orientation meeting with all the first-year students who will be coming through this site.  The rest of the semester the students visit this site individually for 3 afternoons.   Students spend their initial afternoon with Dr. Horacio Zaglul in the Pediatric ICU (PICU).  This gives them some glimmer of the anguished family/child/physician dynamics around a critically ill child.  The last two visits of the selective students accompany a medical social worker on a home visit to a pediatric hospice patient.  This is a potentially shattering experience for many of our students who are, after all, very young, most not yet parents themselves.  We now have an SCE site with the UK Family Care Center which is under the direction of Dr. Susan Robbins of UK Pediatrics.  This clinic is off Red Mile Rd. and sees a large number of Latino families.  Therefore, there will be substantial opportunity for the students who opt to cycle through this clinic to use their Spanish or work through an interpreter.  In the process of winning the cooperation of the UK Family Care Center, Dr. Wiese received an endorsement from our UK Spanish interpreters to take students with them into their clinical assignments.  For the first time this year, our students have the opportunity to follow a sign language interpreter working in the medical setting.  Dr. Wiese secured the cooperation of Mrs. Tina Savelyev, RID and CT, in permitting students to accompany her on her interpreting for patients at the UK hospitals. This is truly an enormous opportunity as Mrs. Savelyev is one of the handful of certified Sign Language Interpreters in central KY.  The deaf/hearing impaired community is an essential segment of our Central KY patient population about which our students formerly have had no instruction/exposure, and for whom communication is fraught with countless hidden obstacles.  Dr. Wiese’s negotiations with Dr. Paul DePriest (OB-GYN) to establish an SCE in the health care of religious minority groups, specifically the Amish and Mennonites communities of central KY, bogged down in Dr. DePriest’s overwhelming administrative responsibilities. She has, therefore, launched individual contacts with the Mennonite community of Mercer County, KY.  As any new fieldwork site, this is a slow process.  She hopes for next year to gain an SCE site for our students with a midwife who ministers to this community.  I negotiated with Dr. Richard Dartt, MD – Family Practice - of Harrodsburg to become an LCE mentor as well as taking our SCE students.  For ICM Week (Nov. 7-11) she organized two elective workshops: one was on communicating through an oral interpreter.  She obtained the cooperation of the Interpreter Service here at UK Hospital who loaned me two Spanish medical interpreters. Two of the hospital interpreters participated, alternately playing the parts of patient and interpreter for students to attempt an interview.  For the other workshop she worked with Mrs. Tina M. Savelyev, a sign language interpreter.  Mrs. Savelyev got the cooperation of four other sign language interpreters.  It attracted 8 medical students.  After a brief initial presentation on deaf culture and the intricacies of sign language, each student had an opportunity to try interviewing a deaf/hearing impaired patient using a sign language interpreter.  She has been working with John Wilson, Ph.D., beginning to assemble a data base of material from the ICM course to be used for description/assessment of its effectiveness.  They currently have under consideration a manuscript using data from the SEC with physical therapists.  In this regard, she has also begun reviewing manuscripts for the Journal of Interprofessional Care.

Research Funding

None

Representative Publications

Wiese, H.J.C., & Gallagher, E.B. (1997). Health behavioral research and medical training and practice: A social context. In D.S. gochman (Ed.), Handbook of Health Behavior Research IV: Relevance for Professionals and Issues for the Future. New York, Plenum, 53-74.

Wiese, H.J.C. (1992). The cutting edge: Behavioral sciences in the University of Kentucky College of Pharmacy (Invited Commentary). Journal of Clinical Pharmacy and Therapeutics, 17, 259-262.

Wiese, H.J.C., Wilson, J.F., Jones, R.A., & Nieses, M. (1992). Obesity stigma reduction in medical students. International Journal of Obesity, 16, 859-868.

Wiese, H.J.C., (author and editor) (1992). Obesity. One program of a series called, Education for Health Professionals, funded in part by NIH Division of National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. University of Kentucky College of Medicine, Department of Television, Lexington, KY.

Wiese, H.J., Torbeck, L., & Matheny, S. Integration into curriculum of a skilles-based module on interpreter use with patients of limited English proficiency. Medical Education. May 2004. IN PRESS.

Goodrum, S., Wiese, H.J. Urban and Rural Differences in the Relationship between Substance Use and Violence. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology. IN PRESS.