IHSE Meeting

(9:00 - 10:00)
Allison Chrestensen, PhD candidate
Resident Physicians’ Experiences of Moral Distress in the Clinical Learning Environment

ALLISON CHRESTENSEN, BSc(OT), MPH, is supervised by Prof. Elizabeth Anne Kinsella. She completed her BSc degree in occupational therapy (OT) with magna cum laude honors at the Medical College of Georgia. She has over 20 years of experience as an OT with specialization in oncology rehabilitation.

After earning her Master of Public Health degree from the University of Georgia in 2008, Allison worked in quality improvement and patient engagement, leading large-scale projects for North Carolina Medicaid waiver programs. Later, she developed a patient engagement program at Duke Health. She currently operates a consulting firm through which she develops education programs and provides technical support for healthcare organizations and biotechnology companies.

Allison has a particular interest in engaging health humanities practices and qualitative research methods to understand and address clinician well-being. She was inspired to pursue her PhD in health sciences education based on her experience teaching pre-medical students in Duke University’s “Reimagine Medicine” program as well as reflections on the challenges she encountered as a clinician. Her doctoral research is a phenomenological study of moral distress in internal medicine and pediatric residents.

In her free time, Allison enjoys growing and cooking her own vegetables and exploring the mountains, small towns, and coast of North Carolina.