Background: In previous studies, type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM) has been associated with increased incidence of hospitalization for pneumonia as well as increased pneumonia‐associated morbidity and mortality. It is unknown if decreased lung diffusion capacity (DLCO) can predict hospitalization for pneumonia, independent of diabetes control, DM severity, and comorbidities. Methods: Using the electronic medical records [...]

Background: Tobacco smoking is the leading preventable cause of death in the United States, Most interventions for hospitalized smokers have used some combination of physician advice to quit, behavioral counseling, and self‐help materials including booklets, audiotapes, and videotapes. Mobile communication technology has the advantage of being interactive and can be tailored to patients' preferred learning [...]

Background: Patients' ability to accurately report their preadmission medication regimen is a vital basis for medication reconciliation in the hospital. Understanding of the medication regimen may also affect postdischarge adherence and medication safety. We examined the effect of health literacy, cognitive function, number of medications, and other factors on patients' understanding of their preadmission medication [...]

Background: Despite the widely recognized risks of anticoagulant therapy, most pediatric patients are started on oral warfarin in the absence of standardized clinical protocols. Given the differing intensity of anticoagulation recommended for clinical and surgical indications, it is imperative that all providers be aware of the targeted level of anticoagulation, specifically the international normalized ratio [...]

Background: Sepsis is a common, highly morbid, costly condition, yet little is known about hospital‐level variation in treatment costs or outcomes. We aimed to characterize variations in hospital costs and mortality rates for patients with sepsis and to determine whether higher levels of hospital spending were associated with lower adjusted mortality rates. Methods: We conducted [...]

Background: Engaging hospitalized patients in their medical care is a National Patient Safety Goal, but methods to achieve this goal remain challenging. Efforts to create “goals for the day” are traditionally provider driven and fail to engage patients in their own goals. The published literature on patient‐driven daily goals is limited, including what patients identify [...]

Background: Hospital discharge represents a potentially dangerous transition in care requiring active engagement with patients and their caregivers. Ensuring that patients undersland any new diagnoses, medications and dosing changes, and follow‐up is essential to preventing adverse events. Misunderstandings at discharge have the potential to cause serious harm and may explain recent research reporting that 1 [...]

Background: Vancomycin is commonly used in an empiric antimicrobial regimen. The joint 2009 AHSP/IDSA/SIDP guidelines recommend a minimum trough of 10 μg/mL to avoid development of rcsistance and troughs up to 20 μg/mL to improve tissue penetration and for complicated infections. We had previously discovered that vancomycin dosing practices at our institution resulted in 34% [...]

Background: Survival following in‐hospital cardiac arrest has remained poor, at about 14%. The goal of this study was to determine the factors related to survival, and to evaluate the role of BMI and central venous access in predicting outcomes. Methods: This was a retrospective observational study. We reviewed all electronic medical records of adult cardiopulmonary [...]

Background: Establishing intravenous (IV) access can be difficult, especially in children with dehydration, who often have small, volume‐depleted veins. Subcutaneous (SC) rehydration therapy is an alternative to IV rehydration therapy when parenteral treatment is indicated in patients with mild to moderate dehydration. A previously published clinical trial provided safety, efficacy, and tolerability data on recombinant [...]