Inpatient Attending Physician Rotation Duration Study

Overview

The investigators are testing the effects of a change in teaching attending physicians' rotations (from 4- to 2-week blocks) on patient outcomes (unplanned urgent visits to the health care system, inpatient mortality, and length-of-stay), the educational experiences of residents and medical students and on the quality of the professional lives of the attending physicians.

Design, Setting, and Participants Cluster randomized crossover noninferiority trial, with attending physicians as the unit of crossover randomization and 4-week rotations as the active control, conducted in a US university-affiliated teaching hospital in academic year 2009. Participants were 62 attending physicians who staffed at least 6 weeks of inpatient service, the 8892 unique patients whom they discharged, and the 147 house staff and 229 medical students who evaluated their performance. Intervention Assignment to random sequences of 2- and 4-week rotations. Main Outcome Measures Primary outcome was 30-day unplanned revisits (visits to the hospital's emergency department or urgent ambulatory clinic, unplanned readmissions, and direct transfers from neighboring hospitals) for patients discharged from 2- vs 4-week within-attending-physician rotations. Noninferiority margin was a 2% increase (odds ratio \[OR\] of 1.13) in 30-day unplanned patient revisits. Secondary outcomes were length of stay; trainee evaluations of attending physicians; and attending physician reports of burnout, stress, and workplace control.

Conditions

Interventions

Eligibility

Locations (1)

Outcomes