Background: Diagnostic errors are common in U.S. hospitals. About six in ten adults who have experienced a medical error encountered a missed, delayed, or incorrect diagnosis. Miscommunication between the patient and care team likely contributes to these errors. Engaging patients in assessing their understanding of the diagnosis may improve diagnostic accuracy as well as the [...]

Background: Morbidity and Mortality Conference (MMC) has been recognized as a valuable educational resource in training programs to improve patient safety. Traditional MMCs are often poorly defined in terms of format, goals, and outcomes, leading to ineffective reflection, discussion and action. Increasing evidence suggests that a structured and transparent approach to MMCs results in measurable [...]

Background: Preventable medical errors are currently the third leading cause of death in the United States following heart disease and cancer (1). Because of this, patient safety has become an important concern for healthcare systems due to the high costs associated with medical errors as well as the impact on reputation and mortality and morbidity [...]

Background: Catheter Associated Urinary Tract Infection (CAUTI) is the most common hospital acquired infection and constitutes upto 40% of all Healthcare Associated Infections. Urinary catheter is used in 15% to 25% of hospitalized patients and often utilized for inappropriate indications. Daily risk of Urinary Tract Infection (UTI) is 3 to 7% with the use of [...]

Background: Incidences of workplace violence have increased over the past decade and remain a major public health issue among health care workers. In response, there have been recent innovations in responses to perceived threats of violence in place of initiating a security emergency, i.e., “code grey,” which triggers immediate presence of hospital security at the [...]

Background: Engaging residents and fellows in institutional quality and safety initiatives is essential for providing optimal care for patients. However, there is no standardized way to accomplish this and the sharing of information is challenging. While patient safety councils exist across institutions, they feature differing curriculum and occur in a variety of formats: hospital-wide vs. [...]

Background: Neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) occurs when an infant is exposed to chemical substances in utero and consequently withdrawals from the substance(s) after birth. The long-term impact of NAS remains unclear due to confounding by other factors that impact infant health and development, but literature suggests that infants with NAS have motor and cognitive delays [...]

Background: Communication, availability and timeliness of evaluation (all skills of Hospitalists) are key drivers for a successful co-management service. Our Hospital Medicine Group created a Urology Hospitalist co-management program in July of 2016. We designated a core group of highly specialized urologic hospitalists (UHOS) to work closely with the urologic surgeons to coordinate and improve [...]

Background: In surgical co-management (SCM), surgeons and hospitalists share responsibility of care of the surgical patients. In August 2012, we implemented SCM in Orthopedic and Neurosurgery services at our institution (Ann Surg 2016;264(2):275-282). This model is innovative because the same Internal Medicine hospitalists are dedicated year round to the same surgical service. After the first [...]

Background: The Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey is an instrument used to evaluate patient experience and satisfaction during patients’ hospital stay. One of the areas assessed by the survey is education about medications. The survey asks patients how often they were educated about the purpose and possible side effects of [...]