Kurt S. Schultz, MD

Research Overview

I am a PhD candidate in the Investigative Medicine Program at the Yale Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. I work in the Leeds Lab (PI: Ira L. Leeds, MD, MBA, ScM), where our research focuses on the non-clinical and psychosocial factors that shape recovery after major surgery. My work bridges quantitative and qualitative methods to better understand how patients’ psychological, social, and environmental circumstances influence surgical outcomes.

My training integrates psychometrics, mixed-methods research, and causal inference, with the long-term goal of designing and testing community-engaged presurgical optimization programs for patients facing psychosocial vulnerabilities.

Quantitative Research

Our lab maintains the largest prospective registry of patient-reported psychosocial vulnerabilities in the preoperative setting for major elective surgery. This registry includes researcher-administered surveys covering 27 psychosocial domains across 140 items, assessing factors such as resilience, social support, stress, and access to care.

We are currently psychometrically validating this comprehensive survey—evaluating its construct validity, reliability, and dimensional structure. Using advanced statistical methods such as latent variable modeling, exploratory graph analysis, and structural equation modeling, we aim to uncover how psychosocial domains interrelate and which most strongly predict surgical outcomes.

Qualitative Research

In parallel, our qualitative work seeks to understand the lived experiences of patients with psychosocial vulnerabilitiesas they recover from major surgery. We use purposive sampling to select diverse participants from our registry and conduct in-depth, semi-structured interviews. Through a constructivist thematic analysis, we explore patients’ emotional, social, and practical challenges during recovery.

We are committed to community-engaged research, involving patient and community partners throughout the design, data collection, and interpretation phases to ensure our findings reflect real-world experiences.

Integration and Future Directions

By integrating our quantitative and qualitative findings, we aim to generate meta-inferences about which psychosocial domains are most actionable—and how to effectively address them—to improve outcomes and equity in surgical care. Ultimately, our goal is to translate this work into scalable, community-informed interventions that promote meaningful recovery for all patients undergoing major surgery.