Background: Quality improvement and patient safety (QI/PS) methods are being used to drive positive change in healthcare. To date, these efforts have led to slow and inconsistent change. Insufficient expertise remains a significant rate-limiting step at many institutions. To address this barrier, trainees need opportunities to learn about and participate in QI/PS. At the University [...]

Background: A recent study showed over 80 percent of internal medicine residents reported being uncomfortable or very uncomfortable with dermatologic issues. Formalized teaching in dermatology in medicine residency may be prudent. This teaching could occur in both inpatient and outpatient settings. Our objective was to study the effect of a dermatology curriculum on knowledge and [...]

Background: Quality improvement (QI) has been recognized as a core component of medical resident training and progressive engagement with QI is required by the American Council of Graduate Medical Education’s Clinical Learning Environment Review. Prior to 2015, no formal QI education was provided within our internal medicine residency program. This deficiency prompted residency program leadership [...]

Background: Despite a commitment to high-quality medical education, diagnostic errors continue to be pervasive. Clinical presentations with nonspecific symptoms and diagnoses with wide differentials are prone to diagnostic errors; dizziness may be the epitome of this conundrum. Dizziness is a common symptom, costly to assess, and frequently misdiagnosed. Diagnostic decisions have high stakes, given the [...]

Background:   Internal medicine training programs have been profoundly impacted by changes in resident duty hours, workloads, and supervisory requirements. Consequentially, it has become increasingly important to re-evaluate and re-formulate traditional methods of teaching to maximize the delivery of clinical education, efficiently identifying and taking advantage of learning opportunities where they may exist.  Overnight care [...]

Background: Unlike other chronic conditions such as diabetes mellitus and heart disease, substance use disorder (SUD) has only recently been recognized by the medical community recently as a medical condition, and stigmatizing beliefs have lingered. Formal teaching about SUD has been shown to foster a more positive attitude towards these patients among medical trainees. Attitudes [...]

Background: Ethics is at the core of a physician’s professional identity. As internists, we are constantly grappling with medical and moral uncertainty. While ethical action is an integral component of professionalism, most residency programs offer little formal training to systematically explore the ethical dimensions of our work. Medical ethics education can promote moral development and [...]

Background: Recently coined the “fifth pillar to the bedside physical exam” in a 2018 JAMA article, a growing number of physicians have started incorporating point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) into their clinical assessments. Many medical schools have already started to integrate POCUS into their educational curriculum. With the emergence of more affordable handheld solutions, practicing physicians and [...]

Background: According to the CDC, at least 300,000 people older than 65 are hospitalized for hip fractures annually. Society of Hospital Medicine recognizes geriatric care as one of the core competencies, and hospitalists frequently provide care to geriatric hip fracture patients. Clearly hospitalists need to be competent providing care to such patients. Our goal was [...]

Background: With the advent of resident duty hour restrictions, many programs now utilize nightfloat rotations in place of resident overnight call, with emphasis on admissions and crosscover of medical patients. While these rotations foster resident development through enhanced autonomy, they often lack structured didactics or formalized learning experiences, in stark contrast with rigorous structures of [...]