Background: At many academic institutions, medical students in their last year of training participate in transition-to-residency (TTR) courses. At our institution, our TTR course includes residency-specific tracks including one for students transitioning into Internal Medicine. Purpose: Despite the frequency of cross-cover care, studies note that this skill is not often formally taught, and most incoming [...]

Background: The Joint Commission (TJC) defines a sentinel event as one related to patient safety resulting in death, permanent, or severe harm.(1) In TJC Sentinel Event Data Annual Review for 2022, communication breakdowns were identified as the root cause for these events. With stricter duty hour restrictions in hospitals nationally, the number of patient caregivers [...]

Background: A key factor contributing to physician burnout is what is known as “pajama time”—the time spent on clinical tasks outside of regular working hours. For inpatient physicians, responding to after hours texting may contribute significantly to pajama time. Purpose: At our large, urban academic medical center, 163 medicine residents rotate through the general medicine [...]

Background: Advance care planning (ACP) conversations are essential for aligning care with patients’ values, particularly for high-risk hospitalized patients. However, there are limited tools in hospital medicine to identify and prompt clinicians to engage in ACP conversations effectively. Best Practice Alerts (BPAs) are commonly used in electronic medical records (EMRs) to streamline clinical workflows but [...]