Background: Developing effective tools which enhance patient-physician communication is crucial to improving the patient experience. Existing research has shown that there are several components which are central to effective communication, including creating a good interpersonal relationship, facilitating exchange of information, and including patients in decision making. Based on our experience at an underserved community hospital [...]

Background: Senior residents often serve as the primary educator for medical students and interns on their inpatient medicine rotations. Additionally, the act of teaching enhances the resident’s own knowledge acquisition and retention. Although residents desire to teach more, insufficient time is a barrier to preparing and providing teaching. Thus, senior residents require adequate resources to [...]

Background: At the University of Colorado, we developed the ‘Health Innovations Scholars Program’ (HISP), a 5-week intensive training program for pre-clinical medical students who seek to lead innovative transformation of the healthcare system. The program focuses on quality improvement, patient safety, leadership skills, design-thinking, and change management delivered through didactic sessions and applied to an [...]

Background: Clinical empathy is associated with improved patient outcomes, but it is often difficult to teach to medical students. Our survey attempted to understand the perception of medical students regarding role of empathy in patient outcomes and ways to improve empathy training for medical students Methods: A qualtrics survey was distributed to 456 medical students [...]

Background: Residency training includes learning to be an educator; however, it can be difficult for residents to feel comfortable and empowered to teach. Further, it has been established that the current generation of learners prefers an environment that incorporates a sense of community while providing competitive challenges. Purpose: Our goal was to establish a program [...]

Background: Diabetes mellitus is common among hospitalized patients. An inpatient diabetes management service (IDMS) was implemented at a community hospital in suburban Maryland to provide better glycemic control for inpatients. Purpose: To analyze the length of stay (LOS) and 30-day readmission rate (30DR) of patients co-managed by an IDMS team. Description: We retrospectively analyzed LOS [...]

Background: Inpatient subspecialty consultation is one of the most common physician practices in the care of hospitalized patients. As per a CMS report, approximately 33,000 inpatient consultation occurred per day in 2008 costing Medicare approximately $1.9 billion. Common reasons for requesting a consultation include assistance with treatment, diagnosis, and request for a procedure. Consult quality [...]

Background: Delivering HVC is a core component of hospitalist practice, and equipping residents with skills and experience to lead HVC initiatives is a priority for training institutions and for society. We describe the design, founding and implementation of the nation’s first Housestaff Council on Value and Innovation (HCVI) as a platform for engaging trainees in [...]

Background: One of the Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM) core competencies (listed as Principle 7) is that Hospitalists provide effective clinical resource utilization. Examples: cost effective care, high-value care, and designing processes that address cost per stay and readmissions. Optimized inpatient throughput has been shown as a strategy to improve overall hospital flow, including streamlined [...]