Background: Rapid response teams (RRTs) are a relatively new and growing trend in the United States and throughout the world. The operational characteristics have not been well defined. This has implications regarding staffing, equipment, supplies, and expenditures and other considerations in order to ensure a prompt and efficient response to any RRT call and to […]

Background: Background:Compassion fatigue is a form of occupational stress which occurs when individuals are exposed to suffering and trauma on an ongoing basis. The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of compassion fatigue among medical students (M3 and M4) at MCW during clinical clerkship. Methods: Methods: A questionnaire was administered to 403 […]

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: The concept of using Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs) in undergraduate medical education (UME) arose because residency program directors noticed a significant decline in their interns’ ability to perform the basic skills required of them upon starting residency. The internal medicine (IM) sub-internship (sub-I) rotation is primed to address the EPAs especially pertinent to the […]

Background: Central venous catheter (CVC) occlusion is a common occurrence, affecting approximately 30% of all CVCs. If a catheter is blocked, either the blockage must be cleared or the catheter will have to be replaced to resume proper function. The objective of this study was to compare patient outcomes associated with the use of alteplase […]