Hospital-Based Medicine

What can hospitals learn from luxury hotels?

Physician
January 7, 2023

Hospitality in health care refers to providing high-quality, compassionate care and support to patients, focusing on meeting their individual needs and preferences.

This can involve a variety of strategies, such as providing clear and accurate information to patients, involving them in decision-making about their care and offering support and resources to help them manage their health and well-being.

The goal of incorporating hospitality into health care is to improve the overall patient …

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How a positive staff helped an uncertain hospital stay [PODCAST]

Podcast
January 5, 2023
YouTube video

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“Hospitals and health systems should bolster the skills of care teams through education to improve patient outcomes by minimizing variations in obstetric care and being equipped to prevent, identify, and address any possible maternal emergency. Our obstetrics …

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Keep the faith: Why the role of spiritual care in health care is critical 

Conditions
January 3, 2023

This time of year, advice abounds on how to develop New Year’s resolutions that last. Some assert the need for resolutions and goals that reflect the deep desire for meaning-making, living life to the fullest extent possible, and establishing healthier, fuller lives moving forward.

Spiritual care is an essential part of any health care resolution.

Some describe a recent Journal of the American Medical Association study as “the most rigorous …

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7 tips to survive night float  

Education
December 31, 2022

My friend texted me the other day that she was thinking of quitting her training program.

Some schedule changes earlier in the year led to her being scheduled for back-to-back month-long night float rotations. She was in the middle of her second straight month of nights and was feeling tired, depressed, and burned out.

Now, this might be a unique situation since night float rotations, on average, are only one to two …

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Is there a third pathway of resilience?

Physician
December 30, 2022

My social media feed has increasingly included stories of friends “quiet quitting.” A term popularized through TikTok, quiet quitting is a reaction to the exploitation of employee labor without providing additional compensation. Simultaneously, my IRL conversations have been filled with stories of the Great Resignation, in which employees have voluntarily resigned, often without other employment secured. A recent report by the U.S. Surgeon General recognized the problem of workplace …

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Physicians: Are we still the good guys?

Physician
December 20, 2022

In the very realistic fictional world of The White Coat Diaries by Dr. Madi Sinha, a first-year internal medicine resident goes through a harsh initiation into the realities of medical training. Protagonist Norah Kapadia encounters a complication of a penile implant in an elderly patient with end-stage liver disease and dementia. Her senior resident talks her through the problem of causing hematuria as she placed a catheter through an …

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A blessing for health care workers

Conditions
December 16, 2022

As winter approaches and life slows down, it’s a time to pause and reflect on all everyone has had to endure these past few years. To those involved in health care, it has been an especially difficult time… a test of both resolution and inner strength. With my hope that all will see brighter days ahead, I offer the following as my means of giving thanks to all of you …

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Leaders who elevate diverse employees create psychological safety

Policy
December 15, 2022

When I transitioned into a new role as a training faculty member at an academic medical center a few years ago, it didn’t take long to realize that the program had a problem with psychological safety. There wasn’t much.

As I got to know the trainees and heard specific feedback, I began to understand why. The trainees felt criticized and unsupported by the training faculty. And every time there was a …

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Physician secrets that nurses need to know

Physician
December 12, 2022

There is no one prototypical physician. Every physician has their own practice style, their own knowledge base, and their own preferred method of communication. In my role as medical director for case management at my community hospital, I was given 30 minutes during new nursing orientation to provide nurses tips when communicating with doctors.

I put together this list of things that physicians wished hospital nurses knew about them, both good …

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If the hospital CEO emailed employees like Twitter’s CEO

Physician
December 7, 2022

To: [Group: all employees]

From: Office of the CEO

Subject: A fork in the road

Going forward, we will need to be extremely hardcore to streamline a restructured Health care 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly diseased world. This will mean working even longer hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will justify a new N95 mask each week.

Health care will also be much more profit-driven. Physicians and nurses will still be very …

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Bring the real You to your workplace

Physician
December 3, 2022

Life is short, so make yours extraordinary. Capitalize on what makes you, YOU, and be your own unapologetic self.

The Almighty designed us as unique but imperfect and flawed individuals, prone to sin and blundering error. But that’s the great part of being human; we’re expected to sin, blunder, and make mistakes. We’re made to err for the sake of learning and growth; otherwise, we’d wither into uninspiring nothingness. Keep this …

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Why is collaboration missing in health care?

Physician
November 20, 2022

An essay posted by Fareeha Kahn, MD (“A hospitalist’s struggle to find teamwork in academic medicine“), raises an important issue. The problem of lack of collaboration is not unique to academic medicine. The problem is the result of misaligned incentives.

Having read the work of Harvard Business School professor Michael E. Porter, I better understand the goals and challenges of value-based care. If we look at the premise …

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Why we should end gendered titles

Physician
November 18, 2022

The question of addressing physicians by name has been addressed again. Yet the question about names has not been addressed.

Before addressing the name question, I will talk about how I have evolved with time.

In India, I have been used to formally addressing everyone as either “Sir” or “Madam” during in-person meetings and in virtual communications when I have known them — “Sir/Madam” or rarely …

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Leaving The House of God

Physician
November 17, 2022

To paraphrase Fat Man’s Law Number Three, “At a code, the first pulse you take is your own.”

Enduring advice, as true today as it was in the early ’70s when Roy G. Basch, MD, and his gang of hapless interns roamed the airless wards of The House of God, the mythical hospital in the infamous novel by Samuel Shem, although almost everything else about practicing medicine seems …

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Institutional betrayal vs. courage

Physician
November 10, 2022

The pandemic has brutalized health care such that the term “institutional betrayal” (IB) is becoming part of the physician vernacular. This cringe-worthy term is being used to point a finger of shame at health care leaders and systems who presumably are failing to support and protect their workers adequately.

Indeed, we depend on our employers for our safety and well-being. With staffing shortages, lack of supplies and lower revenue, employees bear …

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Caregiver? Learn how to support older relatives at doctor’s appointments.

Physician
November 8, 2022

As a caregiver or support person for an older parent, partner, or relative, you may be involved in helping that person with medical appointments, perhaps even helping them manage care from several different health care providers. There are a number of strategies that can help you be an effective, respectful advocate for your loved one. These strategies also help ensure that your family member gets the care she or he …

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Breaking the cycle of violence in hospitals: the role of trauma-informed care

Policy
November 7, 2022

“We use a punishment mindset that exacerbates the trauma (people have already suffered). We have to change that.”
– Bryan Stevenson, Director of the Equal Justice Initiative

 In the months preceding the COVID-19 pandemic, our quality improvement team was discussing the safety of providers and staff on a weekly basis. This was not in the context of a communicable disease or sufficient personal protective equipment but instead related to another insidious health …

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