Background: Medical educators worldwide have been aspiring to transition from time based training to a competency based medical education model. The degree of alignment between competencies, residents’ self-identified training goals, and variations in different countries have not been studied. Our study had three objectives; (1) Examine how residents’ goals match proposed universal competencies, (2) Compare [...]

Background: Starting March 1, 2016 our academic hospital was part of a new “no diversion” policy in accordance with new county regulations of all hospitals.  The goal of the policy was to provide ready access to care.  With this policy, ambulances were no longer diverted from our hospital due to lack of Emergency Department capacity, [...]

Background: In 2016, there were more than 50,000 hospitalists working in the United States. The Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM) published ‘The Core Competencies in Hospital Medicine’ as a blueprint to standardize expectations of practicing hospitalists and to inform continuing medical education (CME) programs. We conducted a qualitative study to discover elements judged to be [...]

Background: Despite widespread mandated use of Electronic Health Records (EHR), many residency programs struggle to find the best strategy to conduct EHR training. Traditional EHR training sessions are typically led by non-clinical IT staff and are often structured around software functionalities rather than clinical workflow. Furthermore, EHR training is often not customized to the needs [...]

Background: Duty hour limitations have raised concern that shorter work shifts are compressing resident workload, which may result in a negative learning environment. Increasing patient complexity intensifies workload compression; however, temporal trends in complexity of patients at admission have not been adequately defined or evaluated. Methods: We conducted a retrospective chart review of all general [...]

Background: Faculty development can help new hospitalists set professional goals, identify effective mentorship, and learn foundational skills. Most faculty development occurs within a single hospitalist group; however this may limit the scope and impact, when compared to a co-sponsored, multi-group event. Previously, we developed a “Faculty Boot Camp” with the goal of teaching content that [...]

Background: Previous studies demonstrate that hand hygiene compliance among healthcare workers is suboptimal. To better understand drivers of poor compliance, we investigated changes in hand hygiene (HH) attitudes and practices among medical students to determine whether there is a discernable decline as training progresses. Methods: Third-year medical students completed anonymized surveys to evaluate these categories: [...]

Background: Communication is recognized by the LCME and ACGME as an essential competency with significant patient safety implications; the Joint Commission cites communication errors as a major cause of sentinel events. Consultation is a near-universal method of communication between physicians of all disciplines. However, formal education in requesting a consultation is inconsistent in undergraduate medical education [...]

Background: Systems-based practice (SBP) is critical to physicians’ work and is gaining emphasis in medical school curricula. Purpose: In this hospitalist-led pilot curriculum for first-year medical students, we developed a novel didactic and experiential approach to teaching SBP skills, seeking to help students apply newly-acquired SBP concepts to inpatient improvement projects to add value to the clinical environment. Description: For the 12 [...]

Background: Communicating with patients with limited English proficiency (LEP) can be a challenge. Despite laws and studies reinforcing the need to use appropriate interpretation services, many fail to do so. Impressing upon learners the importance of effective communication with LEP patients poses another barrier. We created an innovated immersive experience to help learners understand the [...]