Martin Pusic MD, PhD

Martin Pusic, MD, PhD is the Director of the Division of Education Quality and Analytics for the Institute for Innovations in Medical Education. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at the NYU School of Medicine.

A practicing Pediatric Emergency physician, Dr. Pusic also has expertise in human cognition as it pertains to education metrics, health informatics and the longitudinal assessment of clinical skills. These disparate areas of inquiry come together in the development of cognitive simulations for clinical trainees. Dr. Pusic developed computer tutorials for medical students and subsequently carried out multiple randomized trials of the tutorials, bolstering medical student learning in outpatient settings. More recently, he explored how physicians learn to make diagnoses and decisions. Using radiograph interpretation as a model, and using a conceptual model based on Signal Detection Theory, Item Response Theory and the principles of Deliberate Practice, he conducted a series of studies showing that serial practice can be optimized in ways unique to the practice of medicine. The balancing of sensitivity and specificity in making routine decisions, and the inter-practitioner variability in this balance, is a profoundly important theme as medicine looks for ways to use resources wisely while continuing to maintain optimal patient outcomes. In DEQA, Dr. Pusic hopes to translate these educational laboratory studies into educational practice at the school-wide level. This will be facilitated by the NYUSOM’s leadership in educational technology, by its commitment to longitudinal learning across the educational spectrum and by the close working relationships among its educators.