Journal of general internal medicine
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Impact of an Opt-In eConsult Program on Primary Care Demand for Specialty Visits: Stepped-Wedge Cluster Randomized Implementation Study.
eConsult programs have been instituted to increase access to specialty expertise. Opt-in choice eConsult programs maintain primary care physician (PCP) autonomy to decide whether to utilize eConsults versus traditional specialty referrals, but little is known about how this intervention may impact PCP eConsult adoption and traditional referral demand. ⋯ Implementation of an opt-in choice eConsult program resulted in widespread PCP adoption; however, this did not decrease the demand for traditional referrals. Future studies should evaluate different strategies to incentivize and increase eConsult utilization while maintaining PCP choice.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Impact of Clinical Decision Support on Antibiotic Prescribing for Acute Respiratory Infections: a Cluster Randomized Implementation Trial.
Clinical decision support (CDS) is a promising tool for reducing antibiotic prescribing for acute respiratory infections (ARIs). ⋯ The iCPR tool was not effective in reducing antibiotic prescription rates for upper respiratory infections in diverse primary care settings. This has implications for the generalizability of CDS tools as they are adapted to heterogeneous clinical contexts.
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Clinical Trial
12-Month Evaluation of an EHR-Supported Staff Role Change for Provision of Tobacco Cessation Care in 8 Primary Care Safety-Net Clinics.
Guidelines urge primary care practices to routinely provide tobacco cessation care (i.e., assess tobacco use, provide brief cessation advice, and refer to cessation support). This study evaluates the impact of a systems-based strategy to provide tobacco cessation care in eight primary care clinics serving low-income patients. ⋯ This system change intervention that includes an EHR-supported role expansion substantially increased the provision of tobacco cessation care and improvements were sustained beyond 1 year. This approach has the potential to greatly increase the number of individuals referred for tobacco cessation counseling.
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Few assessments capture the diagnostic impressions medical students form immediately following patient encounters. However, notes written for objective structured clinical examinations (OSCEs) allow learners to document their clinical reasoning in real time. The University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine (UIC-COM) has developed a rubric for scoring patient notes (PNs) in their OSCE for senior students. ⋯ We showed an association between PN scores and clinical rotation performance. Since clinical rotation grades incorporate multiple types of assessments of students' clinical reasoning skills, we believe that this correlation lends validity evidence to using the note-writing task as a measure of clinical reasoning. Future directions include expanding the task to different stages of learners, to real life patient encounters, and to formative rather than summative assessments of note-writing skills.
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Little is known about the level of burnout among program administrators (PAs) in medical education and its impact on the trainee environment. ⋯ PA burnout levels fluctuate over the academic year and are shown to increase as feelings of isolation grow.