Background: Two-thirds of surgical inpatients have at least 2 medical comorbidities, and 14% have six or more. Since 2001, there has been exponential growth of comanagement services, in which hospitalists embedded on surgical services take ownership over medical management. While advanced practice providers (APPs) increasingly manage surgical inpatients, successful comanagement models between hospitalists and APPs [...]

Background: Clinicians are not always effective communicators. Communication skill training provided to students, fellows, and faculty is inconsistent.1 However, system-wide relationship-centered communication skills training can improve patient satisfaction scores, reduce burnout, and improve physician empathy.2 Thus, our study’s objective was to determine if a voluntary one-day skills-based communication course could improve provider knowledge, confidence, and [...]

Background: Electronic messages represent a growing proportion of inter-professional team communication in the inpatient setting. Poor communication hinders team collaboration, increases patient readmissions, and may facilitate burnout. Descriptions of inter-provider communications have largely utilized survey data in specialized settings at a single time-point. We sought to characterize in-patient hospital-wide inter-provider communication patterns over a year. [...]

Background: Over the last few decades, medicine has seen increasing specialization and a proliferation of roles, trends which can complicate patient care in the hospital setting. Inpatient care teams are comprised of many types of members, and the boundaries between roles can change and at times be ambiguous, e.g., between hospitalist and subspecialist consultants. In [...]

Background: Human trafficking is a serious problem and healthcare workers are in a position to intervene. This study sought to determine the knowledge levels of healthcare providers who are most likely to be in direct contact with a victim of human trafficking. Methods: An anonymous survey assessing knowledge of specific topics of human trafficking was [...]

Background: The nature of the Advanced Practice Provider (APP) and attending physician (MD) relationship is that of trust, mutual respect, and delegation. In U.S. territories where MD supervision or oversight of APP practice is required by law, MDs are left to trust and delegate patient care tasks and authority to their collaborating APPs while sharing [...]

Background: Diagnostic errors are often attributed to cognitive and systems factors, including breakdowns in patient-clinician communication. The COVID-19 pandemic has limited this communication due to institutional infection control policies and physical distancing mandates, potentially increasing risk of diagnostic error. Virtually administered questionnaires that engage patients in assessing their experience with the diagnostic process have potential [...]

Background: It is typical for new advanced practice providers (APPs) to onboard within our hospital medicine division for at least six months. With the arrival of the first Covid-19 surge in Spring 2020, we onboarded a dozen off-service APPs on a much shorter timeline, typically one week. This required intensive precepting and teaching. As the [...]