Background: A podcast is an audio or video file that is distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on demand. Most major medical journals and organizations provide free podcast feeds that can be downloaded to a personal computer or/and an MP3 player. The usefulness of such an approach for continuous medical education may [...]

Background: The 2005‐2006 Society of Hospitalist Medicine survey documented the growth of the specialty to approximately 15,000 hospitalists in 2006. As the hospitalist inpatient role has grown, other specialties have turned to hospitalists for consultative services. According to the survey, most hospitalists provide medical consultation services. It is believed that “almost all hospitalists provide pre‐operative [...]

Background: The emergence of hospitalists has resulted in large numbers of patients being cared for by small cadres of physicians. Most hospitalists and hospital medicine programs participate in and in many cases coordinate quality improvement and patient safety activities in their respective hospitals. Targeting safety efforts at a few key hospitalists at each institution would [...]

Background: Hospital‐acquired deep venous thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary embolism (PE) are common yet preventable diagnoses. Beginning in October 2008, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will not reimburse hospitals for several hospital‐acquired conditions, and will consider including DVT/PE on this list in 2009. Historically, hospitals have not documented whether the secondary diagnosis of [...]

Background: With the evolution of ACGME duty‐hour requirements, there are an increasing number of patient handoffs. Much of the handoff literature has focused on tools to assist residents in the handoff process; however, few studies have investigated how to educate residents on the cognitive skills required to optimize the clinical handoff process. Purpose: To develop [...]

Background: Legitimate concerns continue to mount with regard to having novice physicians learn and practice procedures on patients. It is incumbent on the education community to develop effective modalities for teaching proper procedure technique that do not place patients at undue risk. To that end, these authors previously published phase I of the Procedure Patient [...]

Background: Sickle cell anemia is a chronic disease punctuated by acute pain crises. Up to 60% of patients with sickle cell anemia will have an episode of severe pain in a given year, making their care the collective job of nurses, PMDs, hematologists, and hospital‐ists. However, little information exists to guide optimal inpatient treatment. Further, [...]

Background: Delirium is an underdiagnosed and often untreated health care burden associated with poor outcomes including increased length of stay, increased inpatient mortality, and higher rates of institutionalization. One technique for identifying patients with delirium is the confusion assessment method (CAM), first published by Sharon Inouye, MD This validated tool has been shown to have [...]

Background: In an attempt to improve the efficiency of patient care, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) has studied “hospital flow.” This work suggests that a multidisciplinary approach using formulas that examine flow in a “real‐time” manner leads to greater success in decreasing bottlenecks and improving length of stay (LOS). Purpose: Using IHI's methods, we [...]

Background: Our program's house staff and medical student curricula were heavily weighted toward ambulatory medicine. Our division and training program wanted to develop a learning tool focused on inpatient skills, using the Society of Hospital Medicine Core Competencies as a framework. Purpose: Create a curriculum for inpatient hospital medicine to enhance house staff and medical [...]