A third-year UT medical student is being recognized on a national scale for his research on post-traumatic mental health.
Lawrence J. Burns, vice president for external affairs, talked with Bryan Lubomirsky, third-year medical student, about his research on post-traumatic mental health for a “Tower Views” video.
Bryan Lubomirsky recently won second place in the 2013 Stanley M. Kaplan Essay Contest for his research paper “Preliminary Study on the Relationship Between Visitation in the Emergency Department and Post-Traumatic Mental Health.”
The paper outlines his research on the factors that protect patients from developing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
“This research is helping the patient population that we serve here,” Lubomirsky said. “There are a lot of war veterans and motor vehicle accident survivors that go through trauma.”
Under the supervision of Dr. Xin Wang, UT assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry, Lubomirsky was able to conduct his research with patients at The University of Toledo Medical Center.
Lubomirsky’s research suggests that patients having bedside visitors and using family or friends to transport them home from the emergency department is a low-cost, effective way to reduce post-traumatic stress.
The research used a scoring method to track visitation and when family provided transportation home from the emergency department, as well as the patient’s levels of anxiety, stress and depression. Patients with visitors and family transportation showed decreased anxiety and depression scores at two weeks after they were discharged and decreased PTSD stress scores at three months.
The annual Stanley M. Kaplan Essay Contest calls for entries of topical essays, case reports, review articles or original research that was conducted in a medical school with a student as first author.
Other winners in Lubomirsky’s company include medical students from Mt. Sinai and Yale University.
“This prestigious award is not only an outstanding achievement of Mr. Lubomirsky as a medical student, but also a good demonstration of the great academic learning environment at UT’s medical school,” Wang said.
Lubomirsky’s research has been presented at the International Conference on Social Work in Health and Mental Health, and his essay has been accepted by the journal Social Work in Mental Health for publication early this year.
He is also a member of Wang’s student team that won the 2013 Interprofessional Student Research Award at UT.
