Background: Mental illness is common among hospitalized patients and is associated with increased length of stay, higher costs, and worse clinical outcomes. Inpatient psychiatry consultations have traditionally held a reactive model, in which primary teams obtain consultation for patients that have developed active psychiatric symptoms. The reactive model has frequently led to missed opportunities to […]

Background: Acquired hyponatremia and hypernatremia are common in hospitalized patients and correcting dysnatremia may improve outcomes. Nephrology assistance with dysnatremia may help optimize management, but specialist resources are limited. Targeted Automatic e-Consultation (TACo), a model of selective e-consultation based on automated identification of patients from the electronic health record, has been applied for glycemic management […]

Background: Procedures, both inpatient and outpatient, are an essential part of the training for family medicine residents. Several residency programs struggle to provide the minimum number of procedures for residents to develop competency and comfort with the said procedures. Hospitalists do offer increased experience with procedures, although more recently, hospitalists are also referring most procedures […]

Background: Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) was legalized in Canada in 2016. Health authorities across the country have grappled with how to ensure equitable access for patients. In Victoria, British Columbia, a small group of pioneering community physicians were responding to all community and hospital MAiD requests. The lack of a coordinated system, coupled with […]

Background: Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) is increasingly being used across medical specialties, improving diagnostic accuracy in numerous medical presentations and levels of acuity. Training in these skills is currently offered through major societies, but graduate medical POCUS training in internal medicine and family medicine is not common in US residencies. Therefore, we designed a two-week inpatient […]

Background: Congestive heart failure (CHF) is a major cause of mortality and morbidity among general population despite recent advancements in goal-directed therapies. The advent of mechanical circulatory devices, the increased availability and improvement in heart transplant techniques have improved some metrics; however, CHF patients continue to have multiple readmissions for acute exacerbations. The frequency of […]

Background: POCUS is increasingly being used across medical specialties, and adds value to diagnostic accuracy for numerous pathologies and levels of acuity. Emergency Medicine providers were early adapters, providing examples of how POCUS increases patient satisfaction and diagnostic clarity (1, 2). Internal Medicine and Family Medicine have been slower to adopt this technology; however, general […]