Using Team Census Caps to Optimize Education, Patient Care, and Wellness: A Survey of Internal Medicine Residency Program Directors.

Purpose: To discover whether internal medicine (IM) residency program directors use lower-than-required caps on general medicine wards, critical care units, and inpatient subspecialty wards; describe justifications for lower-than-required general medicine ward caps and strategies for when caps have been exceeded or the number of patients is a detriment to critical thinking or education; and assess whether caps were associated with program characteristics.

Method: From August to December 2016, the Association of Program Directors in Internal Medicine surveyed all member program directors about team caps and their effects on the learning environment. Responses were appended with publicly available or licensed third-party data.