Abstract
Background
Learning patient outcomes is recognized as crucial for ongoing refinement of clinical decision-making, but is often difficult in fragmented care with frequent handoffs. Data on resident habits of seeking outcome feedback after handoffs are lacking.
Methods
We performed a mixed-methods study including (1) an analysis of chart re-access rates after handoffs performed using access logs of the electronic health record (EHR); and (2) a web-based survey sent to internal medicine (IM) and emergency medicine (EM) residents about their habits of and barriers to learning the outcomes of patients after they have handed them off to other teams.
Results
Residents on ward rotations were often able to re-access charts of patients after handoffs, but those on EM or night admitting rotations did so <5% of the time. Among residents surveyed, only a minority stated that they frequently find out the outcomes of patients they have handed off, although learning outcomes was important to both their education and job satisfaction. Most were not satisfied with current systems of learning outcomes of patients after handoffs, citing too little time and lack of reliable patient tracking systems as the main barriers.
Conclusions
Despite perceived importance of learning outcomes after handoffs, residents cite difficulty with obtaining such information. Systematically providing feedback on patient outcomes would meet a recognized need among physicians in training.
Author contributions: All the authors have accepted responsibility for the entire content of this submitted manuscript and approved submission.
Research funding: Dr. Shenvi and Ms. Feudjio Feupe were supported by the National Library of Medicine training grant T15LM011271, San Diego Biomedical Informatics Education and Research. Dr. El-Kareh was supported by K22LM011435-02, Funder Id: 10.13039/100000092, a career development award from the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
Employment or leadership: None declared.
Honorarium: None declared.
Competing interests: The funding organization(s) played no role in the study design; in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; or in the decision to submit the report for publication.
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Supplementary Material
The online version of this article offers supplementary material (https://doi.org/10.1515/dx-2018-0013).
Article note
Parts of this work were presented as a podium abstract presentation at the Diagnostic Error in Medicine Conference, September 2014, in Atlanta, GA, and at the American Medical Informatics Association Annual Symposium, November 2014, in Washington, DC, USA.
©2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
