Background: Mentorship is key to successful, satisfying, and engaging academic careers. Models for mentorship and faculty development exist, but are often resource-intensive and focused on achieving success in research. Establishing mentorship in hospital medicine has been challenging given most programs have relatively few senior faculty, and most new hospitalists are recent residency graduates with little [...]

Background: Engagement in scholarly activity (clinical vignette, conference presentations, publications etc.) is a fundamental requirement for trainees in medical education. We studied the impact of point intervention – clinical vignette workshop (CVW) to write a Clinical Vignettes (CV) for fourth year medical students at author’s institution. Methods: All fourth year medical students enrolled in internal medicine [...]

Background: Early career faculty often face challenges in setting personal and professional expectations, identifying effective mentorship, and quickly learning foundational skills in academic hospital medicine. We developed a “Faculty Boot Camp” to better orient new faculty at the beginning of the academic year with the goal of introducing them to key skills and concepts that [...]

Background: According to the most recent data released by the Centers for Disease Control, forty-six Americans die every day due to narcotic prescription drug overdose. Nationally, health care providers wrote two hundred and fifty-nine million prescriptions for narcotic analgesics in 2012, or roughly one bottle of narcotics per US adult. In an attempt to reduce [...]

Background: Troponin assays are an important diagnostic tool, often for the evaluation of potential acute coronary syndrome.  Current guidelines recommend using the assay a maximum of twice in the initial triage period if both values are negative and there is relative clinical stability. However, additional assays are often ordered to reassure the provider.  Since this [...]

Background: The role of a hospitalist in treating nicotine withdrawal using counseling and medications during hospitalization can improve cessation rates of tobacco users. Clinical decision support and drug-condition alerts within the electronic medical record prompt the prescribing of medications for tobacco treatment and ease documentation of reimbursable counseling by physicians. Additionally, several hospitals have implemented [...]

Background: In 2004, the American Heart Association (AHA) published recommendations on the use of cardiac monitoring in the hospital setting. It provided a rating system for its indications (Class I-III), which stratify the likelihood of benefit. In June 2013, The Joint Commission approved NPSG.06.01.01, a patient safety goal on clinical alarm use in the hospital [...]

Case Presentation: A 62 year old male with past medical history of DVT, prostate cancer diagnosed 2 years ago, presented to the hospital complaining of 1 day weakness in his left upper and lower extremities. Head CT revealed a sub-acute right side ischemic infarct. Physical exam was significant for jaundice, left facial droop, left tongue [...]

Case Presentation: A 78-year-old white female with sarcomatoid mesothelioma status post gemcitabine and carboplatin presented to an urgent care center with sudden onset of low grade fever and fatigue. She reported a puppy bite 1 week earlier. Examination revealed ½ cm ecchymosis on left forearm at bite site. She was sent home on oral levaquin [...]

Case Presentation: A 45 year-old woman presented with 4 hours of lower back pain, after a fall from standing. She did not report a loss of consciousness, and did not injure her head. She had no neurological deficits, nor bladder of bowel dysfunction. She denied any chest pain or dyspnea. A standard 12 lead EKG [...]