Kanako Taku is awarded a grant from the American Academy of Family Physicians

Assistant Professor Kanako Taku, of the Department of Psychology, is a member of a research team that has been awarded a $31,012 grant from the American Academy of Family Physicians through their Joint Grant Awards Program, which supports research that poses questions of high relevance to Family Medicine. Titled “An Evidence-Based Definition of Physician Wellness in Primary Care,” the project will be carried out in collaboration with several physicians, including Dr. Jodie Eckleberry-Hunt of Beaumont Health System. The abstract of the grant proposal is given below.

“The literature on physician burnout is burgeoning as data emerge linking burnout to patient care quality. At the same time, little is known about physician wellness and how it may relate to patient care. The Physician Wellness Inventory (PWI) was developed as a unique, multi-dimensional measure of wellness specific to physicians. Based on an initial exploratory study of physician wellness using the PWI, we developed the Physician Wellness Inventory-Revised (PWI-R). This study proposes to obtain validity and reliability data on the PWI-R among a large group of family physicians with the goal of defining physician wellness as a multi-dimensional construct that falls along a continuum. The objectives are: 1) to obtain validity and reliability data for the revised five factor structure of the PWI-R among a large group of family physicians; 2) to create a more concrete definition of physician wellness, which will better enable wellness promotion; and 3) to document the relationship between physician wellness and self-reported quality of patient care within the last 4 months. A demographic questionnaire, the PWI-R, the Subjective Happiness Scale (SHS), the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), and the Patient Care Scale (PCS) will be mailed to the membership of a large group of Family Medicine physicians. Data will be analyzed for validity, reliability, and factor structure, as well as interrelationships among various instrument scales.”

Taku’s research group studies posttraumatic growth: how people change psychologically, cognitively, socially, and spiritually after trauma and stressful life events. For details about this research, see her paper “Commonly-defined and individually-defined posttraumatic growth in the US and Japan” (Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 51, Pages 188–193, 2011). Taku’s students have also published two papers in the Meeting of Minds Journal of Undergraduate Research:

• Sawa, M.S., & Pierson, V. J. (2012). Religious strength and posttraumatic growth: Examining the effect of alcohol consumption in college students. Meeting of Minds Journal of Undergraduate Research, 14.

• Crispin, C., & Sawa, M. S. (2012). The effect of disclosure on Relating to Others domain of posttraumatic growth. Meeting of Minds Journal of Undergraduate Research, 14.

Taku was recently appointed as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Family Medicine, with a clinical-educator focus, at the Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine, in the Department of Family Medicine.