Background: Diagnostic and clinical reasoning errors are common and a source of harm to our patients. Improving clinical reasoning skills is challenging due to the absence of feedback. Care transitions have been recognized as an area of vulnerability for hospitalized patients, however, they also represent opportunities for error recognition and improvement as the oncoming clinician […]

Background: A problem list serves as a central place for hospital-based clinicians to obtain a comprehensive and concise view of the patient’s active medical conditions. Use of the hospital problem list has many potential benefits: it provides a mental model of patient’s health status; streamlines the documentation process; makes chart review more efficient; facilitates communication […]

Background: Accurate and reliable medication reconciliation (MedRec) is an indispensable step ensuring patient safety and minimizing medical errors during transitions of care. Yet, it is one of the most challenging aspects in healthcare quality and safety. In fact, inaccurate MedRec accounts for 40 % of medication errors, up to 20% of which result in harm […]

Background: Morbidity and Mortality (M&M) conferences are ubiquitous among internal medicine (IM) residency programs, but often fail to improve patient safety and foster learning.1,2 One key determinant of a successful M&M conference is the choice of patient safety event (i.e. M&M case) that is analyzed or presented. However, the characteristics of an effective M&M case […]