Background: In the past 20 years, the “10/30” rule for blood transfusions has been replaced with conservative guidelines which have demonstrated improved patient outcomes and reduced overall healthcare costs. Hospitals across the country have enlisted transfusion subcommittees to review the appropriateness of blood transfusions. Within medical training, resident physicians rotate with different attendings who have [...]

Background: Patients are discharged home on medications different than those they were taking before admission.  New and discontinued medications as well as dosage changes contribute to medication-related adverse events.  Purpose: To help address this problem, interns in our program developed a standard process during their quality improvement (QI) curriculum to ensure that at least 95% [...]

Background: Communication breakdown plays a part in the majority of adverse events in healthcare. Physician to physician handoffs are particularly prone to communication errors, yet have been shown to be more complete when systematized according to a standardized bundle. However,  the degree to which individual elements of this bundle, including written versus verbal handoffs, contribute [...]