ABSTRACT
In the 21st-century healthcare environment, customer service remains critical to the fiscal viability of healthcare organizations. Continued competition for patients and diminishing reimbursements have necessitated the establishment of customer service programs to attract patients and retain outstanding employees. These programs should increase quality experiences for both internal customers (employees) and external customers (patients). This article describes a unique employee-driven customer service initiative titled Serving Together Achieving Results. Obstacles to implementing a customer service program in a multifaceted academic setting are highlighted, and the use of a novel tool, Q technique, to prioritize employee feedback is discussed.
Subject(s)
Consumer Behavior , Hospitals, University/organization & administration , Organizational Case Studies , Organizational Culture , Personnel, Hospital , Professional Role , Program Development , West VirginiaSubject(s)
Accreditation/organization & administration , Clinical Competence/standards , Education, Medical, Graduate/organization & administration , Emergency Medicine/education , Emergency Medicine/standards , Models, Educational , Accreditation/methods , Curriculum , Education, Medical, Graduate/methods , Educational Measurement/methods , Humans , Problem-Based Learning/methods , United StatesABSTRACT
In response to public pressure for greater accountability from the medical profession, a transformation is occurring in the approach to medical education and assessment of physician competency. Over the past 5 years, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) has implemented the Outcomes and General Competencies projects to better ensure that physicians are appropriately trained in the knowledge and skills of their specialties. Concurrently, the American Board of Medical Specialties, including the American Board of Emergency Medicine (ABEM), has embraced the competency concept. The core competencies have been integral in ABEM's development of Emergency Medicine Continuous Certification and the development of the Model of Clinical Practice of Emergency Medicine (Model). ABEM has used the Model as a significant part of its blueprint for the written and oral certification examinations in emergency medicine and is fully supportive of the effort to more fully define and integrate the ACGME core competencies into training emergency medicine specialists. To incorporate these competencies into our specialty, an Emergency Medicine Competency Taskforce (Taskforce) was formed by the Residency Review Committee-Emergency Medicine to determine how these general competencies fit in the Model. This article represents a consensus of the Taskforce with the input of multiple organizations in emergency medicine. It provides a framework for organizations such as the Council of Emergency Medicine Residency Directors (CORD) and the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine to develop a curriculum in emergency medicine and program requirement revisions by the Residency Review Committee-Emergency Medicine. In this report, we describe the approach taken by the Taskforce to integrate the ACGME core competencies into the Model. Ultimately, as competency-based assessment is implemented in emergency medicine training, program directors, governing bodies such as the ACGME, and individual patients can be assured that physicians are competent in emergency medicine.
Subject(s)
Accreditation , Clinical Competence/standards , Education, Medical, Graduate/standards , Emergency Medicine/education , Internship and Residency/standards , Curriculum , Humans , Models, Educational , Patient Care , Problem-Based Learning , United StatesABSTRACT
Bacterial tracheitis is an extremely rare entity, long considered to be a disease of pediatrics. However, cases continue to be reported among adult patients. We present the case of a 19-year-old female patient who presented to our Emergency Department (ED) with bacterial tracheitis. Other adult cases of bacterial tracheitis as reported in the literature from 1981 to the present are discussed.
Subject(s)
Bacterial Infections/diagnosis , Tracheitis/microbiology , Adult , Anti-Bacterial Agents/therapeutic use , Bacterial Infections/drug therapy , Female , Humans , Sinusitis/drug therapy , Sinusitis/microbiology , Tracheitis/drug therapyABSTRACT
The objective of this study was to examine the influence of frequent emergency department (ED) use on early returns to the ED at a large rural academic medical center. An analysis was done of all 35,440 visits by 22,442 individuals to a large rural academic medical center ED during calendar year 2000. Of 35,440 ED visits, there were 1,992 (5.62%) return visits within 72 hours (early return). Frequent ED visits (visits made by individuals making 4 or more visits per year) was a predictor of early return visits (odds ratio [OR] 3.21, 95% confidence interval [CI] 2.93-3.52; Wald chi(2), P <.0001). Of 22,442 individuals who came to the ED during the study period, 1,601 (7.13%) returned within 72 hours. Frequency of ED use by a particular individual (4 or more visits per year) was also a predictor of early return for that individual (OR 14.55, 95% CI 12.84-16.48; Wald chi(2), P <.000001). The high rate of early returns to this rural academic ED was significantly associated with frequent visits (4 or more times per year) to the ED by particular individual.
