Vickie Kowlowitz, PhD
Dr. Kowlowitz received her Doctorate in Psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and completed her Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the John F Kennedy Institute (now the Kennedy Krieger Institute). She was Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Mercer University before coming to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to develop her career in health professions education, with her primary interest focused on patient-provider communication. Dr. Kowlowitz developed the Objective Structured Clinical Examination at the UNC School of Medicine in 1985, was a key member of the team that developed the Basics of Patient Care Pilot Curriculum which was later integrated into the first two years of the medical school’s traditional Introduction to Medicine curriculum, and developed and directed the Simulated Patient Program to teach medical students history-taking and communication skills during their first two years of the curriculum. She is currently involved with curriculum development and integrating simulated patients into the Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner Program and in the School of Dentistry. She has held positions at the Schools of Medicine, Nursing, and Dentistry, and continues to promote the use of simulation to improve both provider-patient and team communication. Dr. Kowlowitz has published and presented her work at national meetings.
