Medical Student Shirley Chan to Begin Fellowship at UCSF Center for Surgery in Older Adults

Shirley Chan, a medical student at the UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program, has been awarded the Medical Student Training in Aging Research (MSTAR) fellowship from the American Federation of Aging Research (AFAR) and the National Institute on Aging (NIA). She will be working with the UCSF Center for Surgery in Older Adults to study hospital to home transitions for vulnerable elders who undergo elective high-risk surgery. Her goal is to develop and implement care pathways that prevent hospital readmissions, functional decline, and loss of independence.

In the past, Shirley worked in the Performance Improvement department at the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford implementing Lean health care in the perioperative services. Through this experience, she became very interested in quality improvement, health care policy and management, care pathways, and prevention. She will be continuing her passion for aging and health services research working with the UCSF Center for Surgery in Older Adults. Shirley plans to expand her MSTAR project for her Master’s research and she looks forward to improving patient experience and quality of care for elders who undergo surgery at UCSF and beyond.