Background: Alcohol withdrawal is a common issue in hospitalized patients and is associated with significant morbidity and mortality. Alcohol withdrawal occurs when the gamma aminobutyric acid (GABA) stimulating effect of alcohol is removed, resulting in an excess of the excitatory neurotransmitter glutamate. Treatment typically consists of as needed benzodiazepines, which activate GABA. However, this reactive [...]

Background: Hospital medicine is a rapidly growing specialty, but prior studies have raised concern that hospital medicine’s research output has not kept up with its clinical importance. The ongoing evolution of hospital medicine into an academic field requires clinician-investigators with dedicated time and funding to support research contributions. National Institute of Health (NIH) Career Development [...]

Background: Hospital Medicine has grown rapidly as a clinical specialty, but the specialty’s inroads in research have been more limited. We sought to understand the current state of research in adult Hospital Medicine. Methods: We repeated a 2018 survey of leaders in the field with changes to improve the response rate and representativeness of surveyed [...]

Background: Panel-based Nucleic acid amplification tests (NAATs) are laboratory tools that are used to detect small quantities of RNA or DNA to rapidly identify a multitude of infectious organisms. A systematic review and meta-analysis looking at the diagnostic accuracy of the BioFire® FilmArray® meningitis-encephalitis (ME) panel which is used at our institution showed that it [...]

Background: National guidelines recommend hospitals implement standardized approaches to handoffs, and recent quantitative research has indicated that standardized approaches such as the I-PASS tool can lead to sustained improvements in patient safety and provider communication in a diverse array of settings.1 Our hospital medicine group piloted a formal written handoffs process based on the I-PASS [...]

Background: Lack of academic productivity poses barriers to the promotion of hospital medicine faculty members at academic medical centers.1,2 New faculty members may face additional challenges with academic promotions due to lack of research productivity and availability of career mentors. Lack of academic funding for early career academic hospitalists has previously been highlighted as a [...]

Background: While hospitalists pursue a primarily clinical role, we have carved a niche in clinical research, particularly Quality Improvement based research. However, clinical research often involves time intensive chart review, which can become a barrier to hospitalists with heavy clinical roles. A mechanism to mitigate this will be revolutionary. Purpose: In this innovations abstract, we [...]