Over the past several years, healthcare quality has come under increased scrutiny. In 2001, the Institute of Medicine's (IOM) report Crossing the Quality Chasm highlighted the lack of consistency in the quality of care in the American healthcare system. The IOM report showed...
My first consulting assignment involved a surgeon on a small medical staff with chronic depression. He would experience meltdowns in the middle of the night when nurses attempted to rouse him from a fitful sleep. On two occasions he slammed down the phone after being asked to...
How should medical staff members who take the time to prepare and present continuing medical education (CME) be rewarded? There are several options, says Thomas Huth, MD, MBA, FACP, vice president of medical affairs at Reid Hospital & Health Care Services in Richmond...
Last month, we discussed having a comprehensive communication plan that allows the medical staff to communicate with all of its members efficiently and effectively by color-coding correspondence. Although critical to the medical staff's relationship with its physicians, a...
Aristotle spoke of practical wisdom in his classic book Nicomachean Ethics, as noted in the contemporary book by Barry Schwartz, PracticalWisdom: The Right Way to Do the Right Thing (Riverbend Books, New York, 2010). "Ethics, said Aristotle, was not mainly...
Two patients arrive in the ED with influenza during an outbreak. One is a 75-year-old man with several other chronic conditions and the other is a 45-year-old woman with three children. Who gets the last ventilator? Is it the woman because she is younger and has three children...
