Background: Individualized Learning Plans (ILPs) are standardized forms that allow graduating students to self-identify goals, strengths, and weaknesses prior to starting residency. The Coalition for Physician Accountability has advocated for their use in the undergraduate (UME) to graduate medical education (GME) transition. A pilot of ILPs in pediatrics demonstrated moderate usefulness. However, within internal medicine […]

Background: Diagnostic errors are common, costly, and harmful. Cognitive biases and suboptimal clinical reasoning are contributing factors for diagnostic error. A diagnostic time-out (DTO) is a structured tool to optimize clinical reasoning, prioritize the differential diagnosis, and communicate diagnostic uncertainty in high-risk situations susceptible to diagnostic error. Purpose: To design and implement an interactive educational […]

Background: Several institutions have implemented a medical procedure service (MPS) to improve timeliness of bedside procedures and standardize performance and training of procedures by internal medicine (IM) residents (1-2). A critical barrier to starting an MPS has been a lack of experienced proceduralists (3). In 2011, our IM residency program created an MPS led by […]

Background: Individualized Learning Plans (ILPs) are standardized forms that allow graduating students to self-identify goals, strengths, and weaknesses prior to starting residency. The Coalition for Physician Accountability has advocated for their use in the undergraduate (UME) to graduate medical education (GME) transition. A pilot of ILPs in pediatrics demonstrated moderate usefulness. However, within internal medicine […]

Background: Diagnostic errors are common, costly, and harmful. Cognitive biases and suboptimal clinical reasoning are contributing factors for diagnostic error. A diagnostic time-out (DTO) is a structured tool to optimize clinical reasoning, prioritize the differential diagnosis, and communicate diagnostic uncertainty in high-risk situations susceptible to diagnostic error. Purpose: To design and implement an interactive educational […]

Background: Several institutions have implemented a medical procedure service (MPS) to improve timeliness of bedside procedures and standardize performance and training of procedures by internal medicine (IM) residents (1-2). A critical barrier to starting an MPS has been a lack of experienced proceduralists (3). In 2011, our IM residency program created an MPS led by […]

Background: The American opioid epidemic is a public health emergency, with over 100,000 opioid-related overdose deaths occurring in 2021 (1). Harm reduction treatment models, formulated with the goal of reducing the negative consequences of opioid use, have been implemented as an alternative approach in minimizing opioid overdose and mortality (2). With approximately 4-11% of hospitalized […]

Background: Effective provider communication improves patients’ satisfaction, engagement, and health outcomes. Sitting at the bedside may improve communication; however, many providers do not regularly sit during inpatient encounters. We conducted a controlled pre-post evaluation of adding wall-mounted folding chairs inside the entrance of patient rooms, coupled with education, to increase sitting at the bedside by […]

Background: Hospitalists routinely precept third year medical students on general internal medicine wards. One of the key patient care tasks for students is to interpret and initiate management for common electrolyte abnormalities. Formal training to achieve this is lacking for students transitioning from preclinical to clinical years. We designed and implemented a module on interpreting […]

Background: An increasing amount of literature demonstrates the detrimental impact of discrimination and microaggressions at personal and institutional levels in the healthcare workplace (1-5). Confronting these displays of bias involves a multifaceted approach across professional disciplines and hierarchies. Residency is a time when physicians experience and learn to navigate bias (6). To address this, we […]