Background: As generalist physicians on the frontlines of hospital care for seriously ill patients across the country, hospitalists are optimally positioned to lead discussions regarding serious illness. Little is known about hospitalists’ confidence in serious illness communication, or the barriers that limit their engagement. Methods: To assess perspectives on serious illness communication, we surveyed hospitalists [...]

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: Communication is a vital aspect of a doctor-patient relationship in providing medical care. Despite extensive research and ACGME guidelines of interpersonal and communication skills, there is a lack of a formal curriculum that is designed to systematically teach resident physicians on creating and sustaining therapeutic relationships with patients and families. Some institutions have tried [...]

Background: Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs) are fast becoming the framework to assess medical student preparedness to deliver safe, high quality care. The hospital ward environment leads to highly variable teaching and evaluation of EPAs. Accordingly, we felt that the controlled teaching environment found in simulation (SIM) along with a standardized checklist with trained faculty would [...]

Background: It has been well demonstrated that improving patient health literacy positively impacts patient adherence to their treatment plan as well as patient satisfaction. The time just before hospital discharge is particularly important because the provider can summarize the admission including what the possible etiologies were that prompted admission, in-hospital therapies utilized, and what the [...]

Background: Hospitalized patients often require post-acute care (PAC) after discharge ranging from long-term acute care hospitals (LTACH) to home health services. However, patients waiting for discharge to PAC are at risk for delayed discharges [1], which can increase in-hospital complications, increase costs, and decrease access to hospital care for other patients. [2, 3] Disposition prediction [...]

Background: Patient-reported measures including health confidence correlate with health outcomes, such as hospital utilization and post-acute care (PAC) needs within research settings. A more recent approach has been to develop learning health systems (LHS) with these measures to incorporate research findings into clinical care at a rapid rate. We have found that a measure of [...]