Since the inception of the Society of Hospital Medicine Annual Meeting, the Research, Innovations, and Clinical Vignettes (RIV) Competition has been an integral part of the program. The number of abstract entries has grown to 406 for Hospital Medicine 2009, and quality and creativity have grown with quantity. Topics spanned many clinical areas and ranged from scientific research to innovations in hospital medicine practice to diagnostic dilemmas in clinical medicine.
Over 200 submissions were accepted for poster presentation at this year’s annual meeting. From this group, our RIV committee and judges chose the four best posters from the research, innovations, adult clinical vignettes and pediatric clinical vignettes categories.

The Society of Hospital Medicine congratulates the following winners for their outstanding poster presentations:

Winning Research Poster
Eduard Vasilevskis for poster #99, PREDICTORS OF EARLY POST-DISCHARGE MORTALITY IN CRITICALLY ILL PATIENTS: LESSONS FOR QUALITY PERFORMANCE AND QUALITY ASSESSMENT

Winning Innovations Poster
Leonard Feldman for poster #113, AN INTERNET-BASED CONSULT CURRICULUM FOR HOSPITALISTS

Winning Clinical Vignettes Poster (Pediatric)
Jason Price for poster #189, AN ORANGE A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY

Winning Clinical Vignettes Poster (Adult)
Jason Morrow for poster #174, WHEN TO DEPEND ON THE KININS OF STRANGERS: AN UNUSUAL CASE OF CHRONIC ABDOMINAL PAIN

We would like to thank our RIV Committee, Research Co-chairs Margaret Fang, MD, MPH, FHM and Vineet Arora, MD, MA, FHM Innovations Co-chairs Jeffrey Greenwald, MD, FHM and Luci Leykum, MD, FHM and Clinical Vignettes Co-chairs Arun Kalyanasundaram, MD and Christopher Whinney, MD.

A special thank you to Annual Meeting Course Director Joseph M. Li, MD, FHM and all of our RIV judges.

koriolo News from around HM09 HM09, RIV, Winners

As I was flying back home after another invigorating year at the SHM annual meeting, I started thinking about the number of times I have heard the healthcare industry compared to the airline industry. About how they have gotten it all right, and we have gotten it all wrong. And I started thinking; maybe it’s because people aren’t really like airplanes. Imagine you are air traffic control, and this is the sign out you get from an incoming pilot: “Good day, air traffic control, we need your help to safely land our 7 ton jumbo jet approaching from the east. We overfilled the fuel tank, are 7000 pounds over acceptable landing weight, and have a 79 year old hydraulic system. We are flying with a single functioning wing after having neglected to get the broken wing fixed, despite repeated requests by our home engineer. We appear to be approaching at 500 feet under acceptable altitude and are dangerously low on cabin pressure”. In the midst of trying to negotiate the safe landing of that plane, 3 minutes later you see a second plane come on the radar screen, who comes over the crackly radio system to give you the following sign out: “Good day air traffic control, we need your help to safely land our combustible steel machine, after having suffered the loss of one engine and both horizontal stabilizers, with a rudder that is hanging by a thread”. You then get notified that a kamikaze aircraft is heading directly toward the air traffic control tower with estimated impact about 6 minutes. But, oh by the way, for those simultaneously landing aircraft, you should follow the best practices and evidence based procedures for their landing, and when you are done, be sure to report and publicly display the >300 required measures, to benchmark how you did

And with that, farewell, thank you for another great year, and keep up the good work.

Danielle Scheurer News from around HM09

In this lively panel discussion of what is the “right” number of daily encounters, the short answer is “14″ (at least as close to consensus as the panel could muster), but the long answer, as we can all guess is “it depends”. Variable factors include patient illness severity, number of admits/discharges, and the efficiency of the system in which you work. As time-motion studies have shown, MOST of our time is NOT spent in direct patient care (only about 20%), so maybe the better question is: what is the “right” ratio (patient care-to-non patient care ratio), and what can we do to manage that ratio??

Danielle Scheurer News from around HM09

As always, Larry delivered an uplifting speech, empowering us to maintain our emotional commitment to hospital medicine. Hospital medicine is no longer “the engine that could”, we are now the steam engine re-designing how care is delivered to patients in the US. With now almost 10,000 members (2,000 here in Chicago), we are a community of physicians that have entered into this specialty with energy and enthusiasm. Collectively, we have been tasked to do what could seem impossible, but daily strive to gain the skills needed to accomplish our goals. We are a trend story, and people are rooting for us to be successful. We are no longer our sole advocates. The world is in our corner. Let’s not disappoint.

Danielle Scheurer News from around HM09

Pat Cawley, MD, MBA, FHM delivered a speech outlining in broad strokes how we have flourished as a professional society, even during the short stint that he has been President, including the Fellowship and several multi-site QI efforts (such as project BOOST). Challenges to be forewarned about include balancing workload and workforce, and fixing operational issues (such as patient discontinuity and readmissions). There is only 1 way to fix these problems, by thinking about new and different ways to care for patients to balance out the discrepancy between workload and workforce. We will need to get creative in the ways we spend our time and how we allocate responsibilities (to multi-disciplinary care team), to maintain quality while improving efficiency. It is up to hospitalists to be proactive in re-designing care delivery, and ensuring that appropriate outcome measures are tracked longitudinally to make sure we designed it well. We all need to gain the skills (leadership skills) and emotional commitment to lead this charge.

Danielle Scheurer News from around HM09

Kudos to each and every award recipient from today’s Presidential luncheon. It is astounding to recognize the wealth of talent in SHM, and we should all strive to meet the challenge of delivering excellence in patient care, research, teaching, service, and quality improvement. Let’s keep up the impressive work!!

Danielle Scheurer News from around HM09

Today, from Noon – 12:30 or 2:45-3:15, SHM Staff will be available at the Cyber Cafe (across from registration) to lead a brief turtorial on how to participate in SHM’s Online Discussion Forums and Legislative Action Center. 

Can’t make it today? We’ll be holding another session tomorrow from 11:30 – Noon.

koriolo News from around HM09