IHQSE Faculty member, Emily Gottenborg, MD, and her colleague, Amy Yu, MD, are first authors on an article about the pandemic's impact on personal and professional activities of healthcare providers. They suggest solutions to help mitigate the impact, such as continuing alternate and flexible work schedules, developing flexible promotion timelines, investing in family support mechanisms, creating social support networks, and addressing gender pay disparities.
Ninety percent of patients labeled as penicillin allergic are tolerant to the medication, yet those labeled as allergic have longer hospital stays, increased exposure to suboptimal antibiotics, and an increased risk of methicillin-resistant infections. Through several quality improvement interventions, including development of a multidisciplinary clinical care pathway, workflow optimization, and education sessions, a team from Children’s Hospital Colorado successfully increased the rate of penicillin allergy delabeling among low-risk hospitalized pediatric patients. Led by Certificate Training Program graduates Drs. Maureen Egan Bauer and Kirstin Carel, Christine MacBrayne, PharmD, and Amy Stein, CPNP, this work allowed for increased use of optimal antibiotics.
Among the myriad impacts that the COVID-19 pandemic had on medicine and patient care, restrictions on face-to-face interactions among practitioners are often overlooked. In a commentary written for The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety, IHQSE alum, Dr. Sarah Parker, explores how collaborative processes like “handshake” antimicrobial stewardship have adapted to the challenge posed by social distancing and increased virtual communication.
Dr. Emily Gottenborg, IHQSE faculty member and Director of the Introductory Training Program, was the lead author on a seminal paper understanding the experiences of women in leadership roles in hospital medicine. Her team highlighted four limiting challenges including lack of leadership training, bullying, a need to sacrifice to achieve balance and the need for personal and professional validation. Key interventions to address these issues were also shared.
Recognizing the challenges of in-person sessions due to COVID-19, Certificate Training Program graduates Drs. Mary Chandran and Margaret Bock and Clinical Program Manager Megan Bisek published their experience adapting their pediatric kidney transplant transition-to-adult-care program to a virtual platform. The team attributed much of their progress to the knowledge and skills gained in the CTP course.
IHQSE faculty, Dr. Sarah Tevis and team, evaluated pain management practices in relation to postoperative prescribing of opioids for patients undergoing breast surgery. The authors suggest that a revaluation of pre- and perioperative pain management practices and a multidisciplinary approach using ERAS protocols could potentially lead to improved patient outcomes while mitigating opioid over-prescription.
IHQSE faculty published the six-year follow up of the success of University of Colorado School of Medicine’s Health Innovations Scholars Program. The program has shown a lasting impact on students' ongoing participation and leadership of quality and innovation work.
As part of the Leadership & Professional Development series in the Journal of Hospital Medicine, IHQSE faculty member Emily Gottenborg, MD, and her colleague, Manuel Diaz, MD, share insights on building a personal leadership brand. They emphasize reflecting on your strengths, values, goals, and organizational priorities. Sharing your brand and personal vision statement will help others understand what you bring to the team and will help you maximize your strengths.
A team led by Dr. Justin Honce, Nancy Pritchard, Julia Drose, and Nancy Cheung set out to reduce the inpatient MRI turn-around-time (TAT) from order entry to 1st image acquisition. Pre-intervention TAT was 751 minutes. Through multiple PDSA cycles including redesign of the MRI scheduling and role clarity around which team members would transport the patient and do the MRI screening forms the team was able to reduce the TAT to 401 minutes. Review of the process a year later found most of this gain was sustained.
Dr. Ethan Cumbler, an IHQSE faculty member, and Drs. Mary Anderson, (Hospitalist), Jason Stoneback, (Orthopedic Surgeon) and Kelly McDevitt (Registered Nurse), Certificate Training Program graduates, publish the outcomes of a comprehensive geriatric hip fracture program. Completed as part of the Certificate Training Program, the program resulted in a statistically significant improvement in 1-year survival in geriatric patients suffering a hip fracture.