Background: Strong evidence exists showing that effective communication in healthcare conversations improves outcomes such as patient satisfaction, safety, reduced malpractice suits, physician professional fulfillment and burnout prevention. Formal communication skills training in medical education is often limited to targeted sessions such as those focused on delivering bad news, code status and end of life care [...]

Background: Ethics is at the core of a physician’s professional identity. As internists, we are constantly grappling with medical and moral uncertainty. While ethical action is an integral component of professionalism, most residency programs offer little formal training to systematically explore the ethical dimensions of our work. Medical ethics education can promote moral development and [...]

Background: Senior residents often serve as the primary educator for medical students and interns on their inpatient medicine rotations. Additionally, the act of teaching enhances the resident’s own knowledge acquisition and retention. Although residents desire to teach more, insufficient time is a barrier to preparing and providing teaching. Thus, senior residents require adequate resources to [...]

Background: Multidisciplinary (MDR) team rounds were established at Halifax hospital as daily, dedicated interactions between varying members of the care team on each inpatient floor. Members of the care team include physicians, nurses, physical therapists, pharmacists, and case managers. These multidisciplinary interactions allow for smooth, real-time, and accurate information that facilitate communication and enhance the [...]

Background: The role of point-of-care-ultrasound (POCUS) as a useful bedside tool for hospitalists is growing. Few studies examined residents’ attitude towards POCUS or compared POCUS image interpretation skills between residents with and without POCUS training in medical school. Methods: We distributed a 24-question anonymous survey to all our residents. Respondents self-reported their attitude towards POCUS [...]

Background: The American Board of Internal Medicine suggests residents participate in a minimum of five abdominal paracentesis (AP), central venous catheter (CVC) placements, and lumbar punctures to ensure “adequate knowledge and understanding” of procedures performed by practicing internists. Competency in these procedures is poorly defined and difficult to assess. To address the need for well-supervised, [...]

Background: At the University of Colorado, we developed the ‘Health Innovations Scholars Program’ (HISP), a 5-week intensive training program for pre-clinical medical students who seek to lead innovative transformation of the healthcare system. The program focuses on quality improvement, patient safety, leadership skills, design-thinking, and change management delivered through didactic sessions and applied to an [...]

Background: Robust faculty development programs are useful for teaching hospitalists who are often providing the largest portion of the education experience for residents in internal medicine and is key to maintaining institutional competence. This requires setting standards, assessing performance and providing developmental pathways, especially for faculty performing below standards. Community hospitals may not always have [...]

Background: Emerging evidence demonstrates that medical mentorship programs are beneficial in creating the ideal learning environment, in career guidance, and mentee wellness. The majority of current studies on medical mentorship are focused on relationships between resident and attending physicians in procedural-oriented specialties; there are minimal studies with the resident as mentor. Purpose: With the goal [...]

Background: For most of the past century, clinical medicine was taught almost exclusively at the bedside. Currently, learners participate in a variety of activities that may or may not include bedside teaching. Balancing quality patient care and teaching a diverse group of learners is often a challenge. Electronic health records (EHR) with an ever-growing amount [...]