Background: Assessing vitals at regular intervals can be disruptive to a patient’s rest and unnecessary if the patient is clinically stable. These interruptions may lead to impaired sleep, parental fatigue and anxiety, delayed discharge, and increased cost of care. Moreover, alarm fatigue has been described with over-monitoring of patients, as has the overuse of staff […]

Background: The Pediatric Hospital Medicine (PHM) Core Competencies define the expertise required of practitioners in the field and provide a framework for graduate and continuing medical education activities. Since their initial publication in 2010, the scope of practice among pediatric hospitalists has matured. Pediatric hospitalists lead or participate in institutional and national efforts that emphasize […]

Background: The Limited English Proficiency (LEP) population is at higher risk of receiving poorer care and worse health outcomes compared to their English-speaking counterparts. Interpreters should be utilized to help improve these encounters, but physicians are rarely trained on how to work with interpreters effectively. This is reflected in a prior study showing that residents […]

Background: Academic children’s hospitals are increasingly partnering with community hospitals to provide inpatient neonatal and pediatric care in the patient’s own community. Although some academic hospitals are hesitant to form these partnerships due to concern for decreasing incoming transfers, few studies report the true effect of such collaboration. Our strategy involved such a partnership that […]

Background: Pediatric venous thromboembolism (VTE), although less common than in adults, is increasingly recognized as a significant and preventable cause of morbidity and mortality. There are no universal pediatric VTE guidelines, although the American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP) limits prophylaxis recommendations to a limited set of risk factors. Multiple centers have published institutional guidelines […]

Background: Despite the benefits of electronic health records, they have propagated lengthy and redundant notes. At our tertiary care pediatric hospital with a high degree of trainee turnover we identified high variability in documentation in our pediatric hospital medicine (PHM) progress notes with significant note bloat. We aimed to standardize and shorten the length of […]

Background: Each year, 14 million Americans are diagnosed with HPV and 33,700 Americans are diagnosed with a cancer caused by HPV. The HPV vaccination can prevent 92% of these cancers. In 2018 only 42.74% of adolescents in Wisconsin ages 13-18 had completed the HPV series and only 56.47% had received the first dose. Hospitalization represents […]

Background: Family-centered rounds on our pediatric hospital medicine teaching service, which cares for patients in multiple units throughout the hospital, are often prolonged with unpredictable progression. This contributes to inconsistent nursing participation, inefficiencies in patient care, and variable end times. Through the implementation of scheduled-based rounding, our aims were to: 1) start 90% of rounds […]

Background: Rest is critical to healing, yet a child’s sleep during an inpatient hospital admission is often disrupted. One such disruption is oral medication administration, which is commonly scheduled around the clock (q6h, q8h, q12h) by default, despite comparable efficacy during waking hours. Previous studies suggest that flexible medication times help inpatients sleep longer and […]

Background: More than 30 million children and adolescents participate in organized sports in the United States every year. Participation has numerous benefits including improved physical fitness and better school performance, however, it is not without risk. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, children sustain more than 3.1 million sports and recreation-related injuries […]