Abstract
BACKGROUND:
Medical consultation is an integral part of hospitalist physicians' practice, yet there is no uniform training to achieve competency in this area during residency.
OBJECTIVE:
To improve the quality of medical consultations performed by hospitalists in an academic medical center.
DESIGN:
Single group pre‐post study design comparing knowledge and behaviors after exposing physicians to an educational intervention.
SETTING:
Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, 2006‐2007.
PARTICIPANTS:
Seven hospitalist faculty members, and 12 internal medicine house‐staff members, who served on the medical consultation service during the study period.
INTERVENTION:
Participants were exposed to an educational intervention consisting of a case‐based module teaching the principles of medical consultation, as well as audit and feedback in which they critically reviewed their most recent written consultations.
MEASUREMENTS:
Pretests and posttests were used to assess knowledge. Performance and physician behaviors were assessed following the intervention; consultations done by hospitalists in the months prior to the educational intervention were scored and compared to their postintervention consultations. Wilcoxon signed rank tests and paired t tests were used for the analyses.
RESULTS:
Improvement in the median knowledge score (pretest vs. posttest) was significant only for house‐staff and not for faculty (10/14 vs. 12/14, P = 0.03 and 11/14 vs. 12/14, P = 0.08, respectively). The quality of consults written by all hospitalists improved after the educational intervention; the mean scores increased from 2.7 to 3.3 (P = 0.0006).
CONCLUSIONS:
This curricular intervention including audit and feedback was effective in improving the quality of medical consultations performed by hospitalist physicians. Journal of Hospital Medicine 2009;4:486–489. © 2009 Society of Hospital Medicine.