Research Goals
The Emergency Care for Infectious Diseases (EC-ID) research program led by Dr. Michael Pulia endeavors to improve infectious disease diagnosis, infection control, and antimicrobial stewardship in the emergency department (ED) and downstream care settings.
Dr. Pulia focuses on applying human factors and systems engineering principles to develop effective infection control and antibiotic stewardship interventions. His lab has active lines of research involving the most common types of infectious syndromes, specifically respiratory, urinary and skin, with recent expansion to include COVID-19.
A primary research focus is the inappropriate use of antibiotics in healthcare settings—a global public health threat due to an association with increasing rates of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections. In the U.S. alone more than 35,000 people die each year as a direct result of these infections. Additionally, antibiotic overuse poses a significant patient safety concern due to the risk of serious adverse drug events such as drug-drug interactions, anaphylaxis and Clostridiodes difficile colitis.
The ED increasingly functions as the de facto center of the health care system, and antibiotics prescribed in the ED have significant downstream effects in both inpatient and outpatient settings. The ED has also been identified as a clinical environment with high rates of inappropriate antibiotic use. Despite this, antibiotic stewardship research in the ED setting has been identified as a priority area for federal funding.
Given Dr. Pulia’s research focus on infectious diseases, he has taken on several studies related to COVID-19, including research to elucidate the role of biomarkers that may improve screening and antibiotic stewardship practices for patients with COVID-19 and utilize EHR-based surveillance to rapidly inform institutional response strategies.
Research program news
Department has strong showing at SAEM23 Annual Meeting
Faculty, trainees, and staff from the BerbeeWalsh Department of Emergency Medicine presented at the 2023 Society for Academic Emergency Medicine...
BerbeeWalsh Department of Emergency Medicine faculty announced as speakers, Wisconsin ACEP 2023 Spring Symposium
As experts in their field, several department faculty will be speaking at WACEP's 2023 Spring Symposium, an annual conference bringing together emergency medicine...
Michael Pulia shares expertise on antimicrobial resistance, a growing threat to public health
U.S. Antibiotic Awareness Week, Nov. 18-24, 2022, highlighted the need for careful stewardship of antibiotics. Dr. Michael Pulia was at the forefront of media coverage of the increasing threat of bacteria resistant to existing antibiotics.
Shapiro program scholars present projects at annual medical student research forum
Four M1 medical students who were mentored by emergency medicine faculty recently presented their scholarly poster and oral abstracts at the 2022 Medical Student Research...
Michael Pulia celebrates 10 years as faculty at UW-Madison
Dr. Michael Pulia joined the Department of Emergency Medicine in September 2012. We asked him to share his most memorable career highlights from the past decade at UW...
EC-ID Research


