Search

There is great interest in understanding how residents spend their time in the hospital, but traditional time and motion studies are resource intensive and limited in scale. We determined whether a real-time location system (RTLS) that uses infrared emitting badges can be used to track resident time and location. Residents rotating on an internal medicine service in January 2018 were given the option to wear an RTLS badge. RTLS data were compared to the call schedule for each participating resident in a deidentified manner. Rules were created to identify work periods to be manually reviewed for data integrity. Reviewed work periods where there were extended periods of time without RTLS badge movement (eg, greater than 300 minutes) were excluded from analysis. Data were collected from 18 residents and included 236 work periods (2922 hours). Based on prespecified rules, 146 work periods were included, representing 83% of total eligible residents (n = 15) and 82% of total hours recorded (2397 hours). Residents spent the highest percentage of their time in physician workrooms (44%, SD 15%), followed by ward hallways (25%, SD 7%) and patient rooms (17%, SD 7%). Several work periods were excluded because residents left their RTLS badge in physician workrooms after the work period ended. This study demonstrates the potential utility of RTLS to measure resident time and location in the hospital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background A core objective of residency education is to facilitate learning, and programs need more curricula and assessment tools with demonstrated validity evidence. Objective We sought to demonstrate concurrent validity between performance on a widely shared, ambulatory curriculum (the Johns Hopkins Internal Medicine Curriculum), the Internal Medicine In-Training Examination (IM-ITE), and the American Board of Internal Medicine Certifying Examination (ABIM-CE). Methods A cohort study of 443 postgraduate year (PGY)- 3 residents at 22 academic and community hospital internal medicine residency programs using the curriculum through the Johns Hopkins Internet Learning Center (ILC). Total and percentile rank scores on ILC didactic modules were compared with total and percentile rank scores on the IM-ITE and total scores on the ABIM-CE. Results The average score on didacticmodules was 80.1%; the percentile rank was 53.8. The average IM-ITE score was 64.1% with a percentile rank of 54.8. The average score on the ABIM-CE was 464. Scores on the didactic modules, IMITE, and ABIM-CE correlated with each other (P < .05). Residents completing greater numbers of didactic modules, regardless of scores, had higher IM-ITE total and percentile rank scores (P < .05). Resident performance on modules covering back pain, hypertension, preoperative evaluation, and upper respiratory tract infection was associated with IM-ITE percentile rank. Conclusions Performance on a widely shared ambulatory curriculum is associated with performance on the IM-ITE and the ABIM-CE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]