Background: Effective interpersonal communication is critical in healthcare. Historically, pagers, phone calls, and in-person conversations have been the main form of in-hospital communication. New communication technologies, such as electronic messaging, are increasingly becoming the primary way for healthcare workers to communicate. In 2017, 27% of Society of Hospital Medicine responding organizations reported some use of [...]

Background: With the advent of the Electronic Medical Record (EMR), documentation occupies up to 50% of doctors’ time1 and prior work has revealed that internal medicine residents spend more than four hours daily on documentation2. Secure messaging (SM) has been recently integrated into the inpatient EMR system, allowing healthcare team members to directly message physicians; [...]

Background: Secure text messaging is a primary mode of clinician-to-clinician communication in large acute care hospitals. However, the accessibility and ease of secure messaging, and a lack of best practice recommendations, raise the risk of overuse. Multitasking demands from secure messaging challenge clinicians as they engage in focus-intensive patient care tasks. To address this, we [...]

Background: Large Language Model (LLM) chatbots, like ChatGPT (from Open-AI), have received widespread attention in the last year for their ability to process large amounts of text data and produce human-like script responses on a wide array of topics. In particular, LLM chatbots have performed well in areas of patient communication, whether it’s answering cardiovascular [...]

Background: The personal statement (PS) is a crucial factor in a residency program’s evaluation of applicants and has traditionally been helpful in understanding applicants’ journeys in medicine, values, and written communication skills. Now, with accessible large language models (i.e. ChatGPT) designed for language composition, there is interest in how these models may be utilized by [...]

Background: The process by which patients are admitted to the inpatient setting after evaluation in the emergency department (ED) is a critical component of their care transition. Striking the proper balance between the speed of the process and the quality of the communication is paramount to optimizing workflows and ensuring patient safety. At our institution, [...]