Background: Physician advocacy and knowledge of healthcare policy are vital elements of medical education and included within the ACGME Core Competency of Systems-Based Practice. The ability to advocate effectively has potential to impact healthcare regulations for both inpatient and outpatient practice. However, many GME programs do not incorporate these topics into their trainee education. To […]

Background: Compared to warfarin, the new target-specific oral anticoagulant rivaroxaban may have advantages in treating patients with venous thromboembolism because injectable bridging therapy and routine laboratory monitoring are not required. The objective of this study was to compare the rate of hospitalization in patients treated with rivaroxaban after its introduction with what it would have […]

Background: Hospital‐acquired venous thromboembolism (HA‐VTE) is a morbid, often fatal, and — in cases of pulmonary embolism (PE) or lower‐extremity deep venous thrombosis (LE DVT) — pharmacologically potentially preventable condition. Because the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services now mandates use of a “present‐on‐admission” flag for all codes, discharge data from a range of hospitals […]

Background: The National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) mandates shelf examinations for all upper-level medical students completing the Internal Medicine (IM) clerkship. Undergraduate medical curricula have adopted many disparate strategies for succinctly delivering “high-yield” topics to students prior to their examinations, such as PowerPoint presentations, mock examinations, and review of challenging questions from question banks […]

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 […]

Case Presentation: A 41‐year‐old man with insulin‐dependent diabetes and hepatitis C cirrhosis with multiple variceal bandings presented with progressive right‐sided weakness had been seen at an outside hospital 6 months prior to admission, where ring‐enhancing lesions in the left frontal lobe were noted on CT and MRI. CSF and serum analyses for toxoplasmosis and a […]

Case Presentation: A 21‐year‐old healthy woman presented with headache, vomiting, and difficulty following commands. She had no fever, rash, head injury, or recent illness. She has mild seasonal allergies. She worked outdoors as a summer camp counselor. She was afebrile and her other vital signs were normal. She appeared restless and distressed, opened her eyes […]

Background: Interprofessionalism is an increasingly important part of hospitalist clinical practice, allowing providers to maximize the breadth of care provided to patients. As a result, teaching Interprofessional (IP) skills has become an integral part of Undergraduate Medical Education (UME), as guided by the Interprofessional Education Collaborative (IPEC) Core Competencies for Interprofessional Collaborative Practice . At […]

Case Presentation: A 28‐year‐old previously healthy Hispanic man presented for evaluation of bleeding gums and rash. Four days prior he noted mild fatigue, cough, headache, and subjective fever consistent with an upper respiratory tract infection. On presentation, vital signs were stable, and physical exam revealed petechial hemorrhages on the soft palate with bleeding gums (wet […]

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 […]