Often traditional medical training doesn’t provide us with the tools we need to best care for our patients and their families when palliative care goals become the priority. We hope this task force will raise the visibility of palliative care within SHM and provide the opportunities and tools needed for us, as hospital medicine providers, to offer the best palliative care possible to our patients. If successful, we’ll feel the deep personal satisfaction and self-reward of helping a patient and their family transition from hopes of a cure to comfort in the knowledge that their symptoms and needs will be cared for.
Interested in joining the task force or participating in a related work group? Contact Chad Whelan at [email protected].
The Stroke Resource Room
SHM’s Web site features stroke information on call
Online resource rooms comprise an innovative venue within the SHM Web site to focus on essential topics from the forthcoming core curriculum. Specifically, the Web-based resource rooms organize expert opinions, evidence-based literature, clinical tools and guidelines, and recommendations about essential topics in hospital medicine. Initial areas of development include the DVT and stroke resource rooms, with ongoing efforts in other areas including geriatrics, antimicrobial resistance, congestive heart failure, and glycemic control. These interactive rooms help connect hospitalists to information, content experts, and each other.
The Stroke Imperative
Stroke is the third leading cause of death in the United States and a common admission diagnosis. Cerebrovascular disease is a field of great complexity and rapid advance. There is great pressure on the practicing hospitalist to have both a base knowledge of the approach to the patient with stroke as well as an understanding of current best practice.
Traditional internal medicine residencies may not fully prepare one for hospitalist practice. Many patients seen by hospitalists have diagnoses that were managed by internal medicine subspecialties in the past. Most hospitalists feel comfortable managing straightforward gastrointestinal bleeds, myocardial infarctions, and renal failure without consultation. Neurologic cases are somewhat different.
Most medicine residents have rotated on a neurology service, but that limited experience is frequently insufficient in preparing physicians for their future experience as hospitalists. While neurology residencies include one year of internal medicine, the two diverge dramatically afterward. Practitioners of both internal medicine and neurology frequently feel that they speak a different language from one another.
Particularly in the community setting, hospitalists manage the bulk of neurology patients either with or without neurologic consultation. The reasons for this are varied, including poor inpatient reimbursement for neurologists and a tradition of nonaggressive approaches to stroke care.1
The Opportunity
Realizing the need to provide direct access to important information about inpatient stroke management, SHM convened a stroke advisory board, including general hospitalists, a neurologist, and members of the education committee. SHM and Boehringer-Ingelheim provided funding for the resource room through educational funds and an unrestricted grant, respectively.
There is great pressure on the practicing hospitalist to have both a base knowledge of the approach to the patient with stroke as well as an understanding of current best practice.