Background: Morbidity and Mortality (M&M) Conference is a traditional forum that provides residents with an opportunity to discuss medical errors, adverse events and near misses. Conventionally, most of the allotted time is spent on case presentation, unexpected outcomes and therapeutic debates. We demonstrate a unique approach to M&M, where we refocused the content by emphasizing [...]

Background: Prioritizing hospital discharges to improve throughput and safety is a common theme in hospital systems. More recently, there has been an increasing importance placed on early discharges. Earlier discharges help to improve flow for admitted patients through the emergency department. In addition, by expediting patient care, patients are able to have their questions answered [...]

Background: It is challenging for patients to navigate through complex healthcare systems after-hours. This leads to delays in patient care, patient/provider dissatisfaction, inappropriate resource utilization, readmissions, and higher healthcare costs. Prior to August 2015, non-medical staff at external call centers with invalidated standard work, poor work cell co-location, and inadequate active daily management addressed the [...]

Background: Effective discharge education is important to help patients understand their medications and follow up appointments, thereby improving adherence and reducing risk of readmissions. Our institution’s electronic medical record has a standard After Visit Summary (AVS) that is utilized by nursing staff to educate patients on the discharge care plan and then given to patients [...]

Background: As the prevalence of patients admitted with a diagnosis of acute decompensated heart failure rises, hospitalists are at the forefront of delivering care for this complex patient population. Heart failure (HF) exacerbations are one of the leading causes of hospitalizations with high rates of readmissions and associated mortality. Evidence based studies show that optimizing [...]

Background: Prior to Jul 2023, at our academic hospital medicine program, the 6-month clinical schedule was created in commercial scheduling software and released 2-4 weeks before the start of that schedule. The actual schedule creation took 3+ months. This led to physician discontent due to the inability to plan professional and personal obligations. Our schedule [...]

Background: Hospitalization provides an opportunity to provide patients who use tobacco with evidence-based treatment for cessation, including nicotine replacement therapy, motivational interviewing, and pharmacotherapy. However, this benefit is often lost without appropriate transitions in care to outpatient cessation resources. We have found that inpatient tobacco cessation interventions at our 600-bed urban academic medical center do [...]

Case Presentation: A 78-year-old man with medical comorbidities of CAD with PCI to LAD and LCx, persistent A. fib, COPD, HTN, and Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus was admitted to our hospital for worsening epigastric pain, nausea, and vomiting. Prior to the presentation, he was treated for an upper gastrointestinal bleed secondary to duodenal ulcers. Dabigatran [...]

Case Presentation: 47-year-old male with past medical history of fibromyalgia, hypertension, and mild asthma presented with shortness of breath during a double red cell donation (DRCD). DRCD is a procedure where two packs of whole blood are taken from a donor, and plasma is separated from them, this plasma is then transfused back to the [...]

Case Presentation: A 60 year-old woman with chronic mesenteric ischemia was admitted for symptomatic inferior mesenteric artery (IMA) stenosis. She underwent IMA stent placement with a postoperative course notable for abdominal pain and nausea. Two weeks later, she was transferred to a medicine service for uncontrolled hypertension. Overnight, the patient had sudden-onset nausea and vomiting [...]