Researcher | Research Overview
Dr. Kenneth Michelson is most interested in emergency system performance: how well do emergency departments care for children? He wants to describe and then reduce the burden of misdiagnosis in high-risk childhood diseases that emergency physicians care for regularly. By defining what about children, their doctors, and their hospitals leads to misdiagnosis, we can design interventions to reduce that burden. Using innovative methods, Dr. Michelson uses large healthcare databases to detect instances of delayed and missed diagnoses, compares outcomes in patients with misdiagnosis, and determines factors that predict them.
Dr. Michelson is also active in the clinical care of patients and training of residents and fellows. He earned both the Senior Resident Teaching Award and Fellow Teaching Award for his active role in training pediatricians. He was selected as the first trainee member of the Pediatric Emergency Medicine Collaborative Research Committee’s Steering Committee, which selects projects and administers a multicenter research group across the nation.
Researcher | Research Background
Kenneth Michelson attended the University of Washington and received a BS in Computer Science and Cell and Molecular Biology. He graduated with an MD from the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons before going on to pediatric residency training at the Boston Combined Residency Program. He was chief resident at Boston Children’s Hospital and continued on as a fellow in Pediatric Emergency Medicine. While completing his clinical fellowship, Ken trained under the T32 Harvard-Wide Pediatric Health Services Research Fellowship and attended the Harvard School of Public Health to complete a Master of Public Health degree. He joined the Boston Children’s Hospital faculty in 2017.