Other editorial board members also acknowledged that their participation gave them new insights into their own practice of hospital medicine.
“It’s easy to have in your head what you think is the right thing to do,” notes Dr. Dressler, “But until you actually have to try to develop consistency in wording and expectations, to put a process together that can result in a protocol, you realize that sometimes some elements get left out—for instance, the importance of family communication in the setting of DVT.”
Regarding the board members’ hard work, Budnitz remarks, “I can’t say enough about the dedication of the editorial board. They volunteered a tremendous amount of time and stuck with the project for three years. Since the board lived in multiple time zones, we often had calls where people would be participating at 6 a.m. or 9 p.m. We convened on weekends in multiple cities across the U.S. I sincerely enjoyed the opportunity to be a part of this project and hopefully impact the future of medical education.
“I think the document makes a bold statement. It defines the hospitalist as the captain of the ship—and calls on hospitalists to lead multidisciplinary teams to improve the quality of care. I hope it sparks interest and debate about how we recruit, train, prepare, and certify physicians in hospital medicine.”
Dr. Pistoria believes that the Core Competencies will advance hospitalist programs. In fact, he says, hospitalists around the country have already affected improvements in care coordination. The hospitalist movement in general furnishes hospitals with physicians who say, “ ‘I’m going to take ownership of what happens within the four walls of this hospital,’ ” says Dr. Pistoria. “Previous to that, people obviously cared about what happened in the hospital, but they also worried about their office practices. This is our office practice. We want it to work as well as it can for our patients, for us, for our nursing colleagues, for our janitors—everybody needs to, and should, benefit from this.” TH
Writer Gretchen Henkel wrote about cultural competency in the September issue of The Hospitalist.