Background: The HCAHPS survey is used nationally by health systems as a standard to measure the patient experience and identify opportunities for improvement. Historically, process improvement initiatives based on the survey are implemented retroactively, attempting to prevent negative experiences for future patients. However, given the increasing complexity of patient care, proactively addressing the identified concerns [...]

Background: Hospitalists rely on patients’ family members and caregivers to convey medical history, communicate on the patient’s behalf, assist with decision making, participate in care training, partake in discharge planning and provide support. With the rise of COVID-19 infection rates across the country, hospitals promptly enforced strict visitation protocols to prevent transmission, preserve PPE and [...]

Background: Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recommends against the use of Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) for determining patient satisfaction with physicians, however, hospital administrators often use HCAHPS scores as one metric for determining physician incentives. Such use of HCAHPS likely results from its easy availability and lack of [...]

Background: Under-represented minority (URM) physicians, specifically African American, Native American, Hispanic, and/or Pacific Islander, constitute only about 10% of practicing cardiologists. Although concerted efforts to increase diversity may increase the likelihood of graduating minority cardiologists, there remains uncertainty regarding how best to recruit and incentivize URM applicants to apply for cardiology fellowship training. As a [...]

Background: Sitting at the bedside improves patients’ perception of their interactions with their physicians. Despite these data, prior work shows that medicine interns sit during only 9% of observed physician-patient interactions. We aimed to assess perceived importance of and barriers to sitting at the bedside among a group of internal medicine residents. These results have [...]

Background: Physician handoffs between inpatient shifts influence safety and care quality. Handoffs are also at risk for communication failures. Poor care coordination and miscommunication cause 80% of sentinel events nationwide. The rise of the electronic medical record (EMR) presented an opportunity to standardize communication during handoffs. Unfortunately, this potential has thus far gone largely unrealized, [...]

Background: Writing and presenting case reports provides opportunity for scholarly activities and promotes scientific writing and critical thinking. This study assesses Internal Medicine residents’ perceived benefits, challenges, and barriers regarding writing and presenting case reports. Methods: A Qualtrics survey was emailed to total 125 Internal Medicine Residents of the Medical College of Wisconsin. The survey [...]

Background: In an academic center, a physician team may be comprised of medical students, interns, residents, fellows and an attending. Patients encounter multiple members from the same physician team and this often leads to confusion in regards to their individual care. It is evident that this leads to patient confusion and misunderstandings can ensue. A [...]

Background: Emerging evidence demonstrates that medical mentorship programs are beneficial in creating the ideal learning environment, in career guidance, and mentee wellness. The majority of current studies on medical mentorship are focused on relationships between resident and attending physicians in procedural-oriented specialties; there are minimal studies with the resident as mentor. Purpose: With the goal [...]

Background: As patient satisfaction surveys become a routine part of physician performance evaluations, it is increasingly important to study the tools that are utilized to evaluate this performance. Little research has been performed to assess the metrics of these tools. Top box percentage is frequently used to report physician performance but the relationship of top [...]