Designing and Implementing a Novel Virtual Rounds Curriculum for Medical Students' Internal Medicine Clerkship During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Introduction: During the COVID-19 pandemic, third-year medical students were temporarily unable to participate in onsite clinical activities. We identified the curricular components of an internal medicine (IM) clerkship that would be compromised if students learned solely from online didactics, case studies, and simulations (i.e., prerounding, oral presentations, diagnostic reasoning, and medical management discussions). Using these guiding principles, we created a virtual rounds (VR) curriculum to provide IM clerkship students with clinical exposure during a virtual learning period. Methods: Held three times a week for 2 weeks, VR consisted of three curricular components. First, clerkship students prerounded on an assigned hospitalized patient by remotely accessing the electronic health record and calling into hospital rounds. Second, each student prepared an oral presentation on their assigned patient. Third, using videoconferencing, students delivered these oral presentations to telemedicine VR small groups consisting of three to four students and three tele-instructors. Tele-instructors then provided feedback on oral presentations and taught clinical concepts. We assessed the effectiveness of VR by anonymously surveying students and tele-instructors. Results: Twenty-nine students and 34 volunteer tele-instructors participated in VR over four blocks. A majority of students felt VR improved their prerounding abilities (86%), oral presentation abilities (93%), and clinical reasoning skills (62%). All students found small group to be useful. Discussion: VR allowed students to practice rounding skills in a supportive team-based setting. The lessons learned from its implementation could facilitate education during future pandemics and could also supplement in-person clerkship education.

Hospital Medicine Has a Specialty Code. Is the Memo Still in the Mail?

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services awarded Hospital Medicine a Medicare specialty code, "C6", in 2016. We examined the early uptake of C6 code using the 2017 Medicare Part B utilization data. We also compared the actual C6 specialty code usage against estimated rates of overall hospitalist billing using threshold-based hospitalist rates of Evaluation and Management codes to assess the integration of the newly introduced code. Billing activity associated with the C6 code was approximately one-tenth of expected rates.

Updates in Pediatric Hospital Medicine: Six Practical Ways to Improve the Care of Hospitalized Children.

BACKGROUND: As pediatric hospital medicine continues to grow, it is important to keep abreast of the current literature. This article provides a summary of six of the most impactful articles published in 2018. METHODS: The authors reviewed articles published between January 2018 and December 2018 for the 2019 Society of Hospital Medicine national conference presentation of Top Articles in Pediatric Hospital Medicine, where the top 10 articles of 2018 were presented. Six of the 10 articles are highlighted in this review based on article quality and their applicability to change practices in the hospital setting or prompt further research. RESULTS: Key findings from the articles include: multiple interventions aimed at providers can improve compliance with bronchiolitis guidelines; a developed calculator can improve testing for urinary tract infections in children aged 2-24 months; nonmedical costs of hospitalizations are underappreciated and disproportionately affect those with a lower socioeconomic status; a progress note template in an electronic health record can lead to higher quality and shorter notes; for febrile infants aged 60 days and younger, most blood and cerebrospinal fluid culture pathogens can be identified within 24 hours and nearly all by 36 hours; and the development of a high-value care tool can help to bring concepts of high-value care into family-centered rounds. CONCLUSION: The six selected articles highlight findings pertinent to pediatric hospital medicine.

Pediatric Hospital Medicine: Where We Are, Where We Are Headed: State of the Specialty, Looking Forward.

Although pediatric hospital medicine (PHM) is in its adolescence, it is already having a major impact on patient care, quality, safety, and education. Pediatric hospitalists have been front-and-center in the safety and quality movement, driving change as clinicians, applying evidence-based medicine to standardize practice and promulgate evidence-based guidelines, and playing a central role in optimizing the function of inter-professional teams. Pediatric hospitalists have championed the importance of patient-and family-centeredness of care and the need to incorporate principles of health literacy into all aspects of clinical care and research. Beyond delivering care, pediatric hospitalists have prominent roles as hospital leaders, educators, and researchers and have played a critical role in promoting improvements in health and health care outcomes. In its continued evolution, clinical care will undoubtedly remain the major focus, though with subspecialty status, the field will be expected to accelerate innovations in systems-based practice, advance clinical learning environments, and drive further improvements in quality of care.

Workforce Trends and Analysis of Selected Pediatric Subspecialties in the United States.

OBJECTIVE: To update pediatric subspecialty workforce data to support evidence-based legislation and public policy decisions by replicating the American Academy of Pediatrics' 1998 Future of Pediatric Education (FOPE II) workforce survey. METHODS: A descriptive and comparative analysis of survey responses from 9950 US pediatric subspecialists who completed an electronic survey. RESULTS: Pediatric subspecialists are working fewer hours and spending less of their time in direct patient care than they did in 1998 but the mean hours worked differs significantly according to subspecialty. Most subspecialists continue to be board-certified, white, non-Hispanic men, although the percentage who are women and from minority groups has increased. The proportion of subspecialists practicing in an academic medical center has increased since 1998. Thirty percent of pediatric subspecialists reported appointment wait times of >2 weeks and pediatric subspecialists in developmental pediatrics, endocrinology, and neurology identified much longer wait times than other subspecialists. CONCLUSION: The demographic and practice characteristics of pediatric subspecialists have changed since the FOPE II survey and access to subspecialty care in a family's community remains a challenge. However, pediatric subspecialties are not monolithic and solutions to workforce shortages will need to take into account these differences to improve access to subspecialty care.

Update in Hospital Medicine: Practical Lessons from the Literature.

BACKGROUND: Hospital Medicine has a widening scope of practice. This article provides a summary of recent highimpact publications for busy clinicians who provide care to hospitalized adults. METHODS: The authors reviewed articles published between March 2016 and March 2017 for the Update in Hospital Medicine presentations at the 2017 Society of Hospital Medicine and Society of General Internal Medicine annual meetings. Nine of the 20 articles presented were selected for this review based on the article quality and potential to influence practice. RESULTS: The key insights gained include: pulmonary embolism may be a more common cause of syncope and acute exacerbation of COPD than previously recognized; nonthoracic low-tesla MRI is safe following a specific protocol for patients with cardiac devices implanted after 2001; routine inpatient blood cultures for fever are of a low yield with a false positive rate similar to the true positive rate; chronic opioid use after surgery occurs more frequently than in the general population; high-sensitivity troponin and a negative ECG performed 3 hours after an episode of chest pain can rule out acute myocardial infarction; sitting at patients' bedsides enhances patients' perception of provider communication; 5 days of antibiotics for community-acquired pneumonia is equivalent to longer courses; oral proton pump inhibitors (PPI) are as effective as IV PPIs after an esophagogastroduodenoscopy (EGD) for the treatment of bleeding peptic ulcers. CONCLUSIONS: Recent research provides insight into how we approach common medical problems in the care of hospitalized adults. These articles have the potential to change or confirm current practices.

Forgotten but Not Gone: Update on Measles Infection for Hospitalists.

Measles (rubeola) continues to be endemic and epidemic in many regions of the world. Measles is primarily a disease of childhood, but it can also affect adult populations, and therefore it is important that both adult and pediatric hospitalist physicians be able to recognize it. Although the disease is rarely encountered in the United States, measles infection can spread rapidly across vulnerable populations. In addition, infected adults can develop complications that may require hospitalization for treatment. This review summarizes the typical clinical course and complications of measles infection, along with recommendations for diagnosis and management for both adult and pediatric hospitalists. Journal of Hospital Medicine 2017;12:472-476.

It All Just Clicks: Development of an Inpatient E-Consult Program.

Although the use of electronic consultations (e-consults) in the outpatient setting is commonplace, there is little evidence of their use in the inpatient setting. Often, the only choice hospitalists have is between requesting a time-consuming in-person consultation or requesting an informal, undocumented "curbside" consultation. For a new, remote hospital in our healthcare system, we developed an e-consult protocol that can be used to address simple consultation questions. In the first year of the program, 143 e-consults occurred; the top 5 consultants were infectious disease, hematology, endocrinology, nephrology, and cardiology. Over the first 4 months, no safety issues were identified in chart review audits; to date, no safety issues have been identified through the hospital's incident reporting system. In surveys, hospitalists were universally pleased with the quality of e-consult recommendations, though only 43% of consultantsagreed. With appropriate care for patient selection, e-consults can be used to safely and efficiently provide subspecialty expertise to a remote inpatient site Journal of Hospital Medicine 2017;12:332-334.

Hospital Medicine Resident Training Tracks: Developing the Hospital Medicine Pipeline.

BACKGROUND: Hospital medicine (HM) is rapidly evolving into new clinical and nonclinical roles. Traditional internal medicine (IM) residency training likely does not optimally prepare residents for success in HM. Hospital medicine residency training tracks may offer a preferred method for specialized HM education. METHODS: Internet searches and professional networks were used to identify HM training tracks. Information was gathered from program websites and discussions with track directors. RESULTS: The 11 HM tracks at academic medical centers across the United States focus mostly on senior residents. Track structure and curricular content are determined largely by the structure and curricula of the IM residency programs in which they exist. Almost all tracks feature experiential quality improvement projects. Content on healthcare economics and value is common, and numerous track leaders report this content is expanding from HM tracks into entire residency programs. Tracks also provide opportunities for scholarship and professional development, such as workshops on abstract creation and job procurement skills. Almost all tracks include HM preceptorships as well as rotations within various disciplines of HM. CONCLUSIONS: HM residency training tracks focus largely on quality improvement, health care economics, and professional development. The structures and curricula of these tracks are tightly linked to opportunities within IM residency programs. As HM continues to evolve, these tracks likely will expand to bridge clinical and extra-clinical gaps between traditional IM training and contemporary HM practice. Journal of Hospital Medicine 2017;12:173-176.