Quality improvement approach to reduce patient cycle time at a student-run free healthcare clinical network.

Background: The University of Florida (UF) Equal Access Clinic Network (EACN) is the largest student-run free healthcare clinic network in Florida. The UF EACN serves those who are underinsured or uninsured in Alachua County and its surrounding area. Nationally, average total clinic time per medical visit has been established to be 84 min.

Choosing Wisely in Pediatric Hospital Medicine: 5 New Recommendations to Improve Value.

Objectives: The health care system faces ongoing challenges due to low-value care. Building on the first pediatric hospital medicine contribution to the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation Choosing Wisely Campaign, a working group was convened to identify additional priorities for improving health care value for hospitalized children.

Methods: A study team composed of nominees from national pediatric medical professional societies was convened, including pediatric hospitalists with expertise in clinical care, hospital leadership, and research.

A Quality Education: A Comprehensive Review of a Combined Longitudinal and Specialty Track Quality Improvement and Patient Safety Medical School Curriculum.

Structured quality improvement and patient safety (QI/PS) education has increased at every level of medical education; however, great variability exists in the content taught. Here, the authors present a longitudinal model for medical student QI/PS education that is currently implemented at the University of Florida College of Medicine. The curriculum is taught with a variety of teaching methods incorporated into each year with increasing levels of clinical implementation.

Transforming the Culture of Peer Review: Implementation Across Three Departments in an Academic Health Center.

Objectives: Although many health care institutions believe that clinical peer review is vital for identifying and improving quality of care, peer review is perceived by many clinicians as variable and inherently punitive. Successful peer review requires institutional leadership and adoption of a just culture approach to investigating and determining accountability for medical errors that result in harm.

Methods: We describe how an academic medical center implemented and adapted its clinical peer review processes to be consistent with just culture theory and provide a roadmap that other institutions may follow.

Preventive oral health care in early childhood: knowledge, confidence, and practices of pediatricians and family physicians in Florida.

Objective: To examine the relationships among pediatricians' and family physicians' oral health training, knowledge, confidence, and practice patterns.

Study Design: A survey of physicians identified through the membership databases of the Florida Academy of Family Physicians and the Florida Pediatric Society was conducted in 2008. Responses of pediatricians and family physicians were compared through bivariate and multivariate analyses.

A patient with an unusual cause right lower quadrant pain and vomiting: pyelonephritis of an ectopic right kidney masquerading as acute appendicitis.

An adolescent female presented with one day of abdominal pain and clinical findings of acute appendicitis. CT scan revealed an ectopic right kidney with changes of acute pyelonephritis. This paper underscores the importance of imaging the right pelvis prior to surgical intervention in suspected cases of acute appendicitis in children.