Articles related to Hospitalist

The transition from hospital to home post-stroke is fraught with challenges for ensuring the continuation of appropriate care and managing the risk of rehospitalization. This review and recommendation details the potential disruptions to care and provides practical advice for preventing and managing the same.

Reducing unneeded lab work in the hospital setting is a monumental task. It is a kind of security blanket, and it is automated in many EMRs. For clinicians, seeing that lab values are stable can be a reassurance while waiting for treatment to take effect. And everyone has their story of the one patient for whom a change in routine daily labs prompted urgent intervention.

Hospitals are seeing trends with which no one in hospital management has experience: inflation rates above 5%, higher staff shortages, increased staffing costs, supply chain challenges, and more. Hospitalists have a proven benefit in reducing length of stay, improving with nursing and allied health staff, and finding other ways to reduce cost and utilization.

In the ER, the patient was disoriented and appeared pale and diaphoretic. He initially complained of dizziness, shortness of breath, ringing in the ears, and feeling “weird.” Temperature and oxygen saturation were normal. BP was 182/112, and blood glucose was 152. Initial labs and studies showed no obvious cause for the patient’s problem. Follow Dr. Antonio Granfone through the differential and the ultimate discovery and correction of the cause.

According to the findings of the study, gabapentin should not be used on a regular basis. Individualization is required, based on the type of pain and the risk of delirium. If gabapentin is used to control postoperative pain, it must be closely monitored for the development of delirium. Low-dose opioids, along with nonpharmacologic pain management strategies such as postoperative physical therapy and mobilization, can still be used safely in the study population. Rather than relying on a single medication, a more holistic approach to postoperative pain control in the hospital setting is required.

Reports on the Vaccine Safety Datalink flagged the need to investigate a potential increased risk those 65 years of age and older, for ischemic stroke in the first 21 days after receiving the bivalent Pfizer-BioNTech booster. FDA has parallel monitoring systems to confirm or fail to validate a safety signal. In this case, those other systems did not confirm the Vaccine Safety Datalink flag.