Chronic Intravenous Inotropic Support as Palliative Therapy and Bridge Therapy for Patients With Advanced Heart Failure: A Single-Center Experience.

Background: Many patients with American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Stage D (advanced) heart failure are discharged home on chronic intravenous inotropic support (CIIS) as bridge to surgical therapy or as palliative therapy. This study analyzed the clinical trajectory of patients with advanced heart failure who were on home CIIS.

Methods: We conducted a single-institution, retrospective cohort study of patients on CIIS between 2010 and 2016 (n = 373), stratified by indication for initiation of inotropic support.

Efficacy of quality improvement and patient safety workshops for students: a pilot study.

Background: While the Association of American Medical Colleges encourages medical schools to incorporate quality improvement and patient safety (QI/PS) into their curriculum, medical students continue to have limited QI/PS exposure. To prepare medical students for careers that involve QI/PS, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement chapter at an allopathic medical school and school of allied health professions initiated self-directed learning by offering student-led workshops to equip learners with skills to improve the quality and safety of healthcare processes.

Methods: In this prospective cohort study, workshops were hosted for medical students between 2015 and 2018 on five QI/PS topics: Process Mapping, Root-Cause Analysis (RCA), Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) Cycles, Evidence Based Medicine (EBM), and Patient Handoffs.

Top Qualifications Hospitalist Leaders Seek in Candidates: Results from a National Survey.

Despite rapidly growing interest in Hospital Medicine (HM), no prior research has examined the factors that may be most beneficial or detrimental to candidates during the HM hiring process. We developed a survey instrument to assess how those involved in the HM hiring process assess HM candidate attributes, skills and behaviors. The survey was distributed electronically to nontrainee physician Society of Hospital Medicine members.

Eleven Principles for Teaching Quality Improvement Virtually: Engaging With Geographically Distributed Learners.

Health care professionals in the United States are expected to engage in quality improvement (QI) as part of their daily practice. This has created the need for QI training at all levels of health professional education. A reported barrier to increasing QI-trained health care professionals is the lack of QI-trained faculty at health care institutions and the limited availability of practitioners, given their daily clinical demands.

Impact of a Resident-Centered Interprofessional Quality Improvement Intervention on Acute Care Length of Stay.

Competency in interprofessional quality improvement and performance measurement is required by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. We implemented an interprofessional quality improvement project to support trainee involvement in systems-level improvement to reduce hospital length of stay and engage trainees in efforts to improve the validity and reliability of clinical documentation contributing to risk-adjusted performance measures. The intervention had three components: daily interprofessional disposition huddles to discuss discharge needs, medical documentation curriculum to improve clinical data accuracy, and scheduled coding huddles to provide real-time feedback on documentation.

Evaluation of a Distance Learning Curriculum for Interprofessional Quality Improvement Leaders.

As health care systems move toward value-based care, training future leaders in quality improvement (QI) is essential. Web-based training allows for broad dissemination of QI knowledge to geographically distributed learners. The authors conducted a longitudinal evaluation of a structured, synchronous web-based, advanced QI curriculum that facilitated engagement and real-time feedback.

Assessing residents' knowledge of patient satisfaction: a cross-sectional study at a large academic medical centre.

Objectives: Patient satisfaction impacts healthcare quality and outcomes. Residents play an important role in patient satisfaction at academic institutions. This study aims to assess residents' patient satisfaction knowledge and determine which learning experiences contributed to their knowledge acquisition.

A human factors approach to improving electronic performance measurement of venous thromboembolism prophylaxis.

Objective: In 2011, our institution developed a venous thromboembolism (VTE) prophylaxis order set to monitor prophylaxis management through physician-generated risk assessment orders. Prophylaxis rates obtained using the risk assessment orders were falsely low compared with chart review. Our goal was to redesign the order set to increase the percentage of VTE risk assessments ordered, both to improve care and to better reflect performance.