FREE NEJM E-TOC    HOME   |   SUBSCRIBE   |   CURRENT ISSUE   |   PAST ISSUES   |   COLLECTIONS   |   Search Term  Advanced Search

Sign in | Get NEJM's E-Mail Table of Contents — Free | Subscribe

BECOMING A PHYSICIAN Previous Volume 351:1822-1824 October 28, 2004 Number 18 Next

	Since this article has no abstract, we have provided an extract of the first 100 words of the full text and any section headings.

	Full Text PDF PDA Full Text Purchase this article Add to Personal Archive Add to Citation Manager Notify a Friend E-mail When Cited E-mail When Letters Appear Related Article by Lockley, S. W. Related Article by Landrigan, C. P. PubMed Citation

If an anthropologist were to stumble into this room between 6 and 8 p.m. this evening, he might find the telltale signs of a ritual: a group of residents and interns huddled around a table, scribbling hieroglyphics on scraps of paper.

(Figure)

View larger version (13K): [in this window] [in a new window]

 
To a physician, this scenario is all too familiar — we call it "sign-out" — but in a way, the anthropologist would be right: it is a peculiar ritual, this daily transfer of patients from one medical team to another. As I write this, at the end of a frantic afternoon, 18 residents are simultaneously handing . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Source Information

From Dana Farber/Partners Cancer Care and Harvard Medical School, Boston.

This article has been cited by other articles:

• Volpp, K. G. (2008). A Delicate Balance: Physician Work Hours, Patient Safety, and Organizational Efficiency. Circulation 117: 2580-2582 [Full Text]  
• Volpp, K. G., Rosen, A. K., Rosenbaum, P. R., Romano, P. S., Even-Shoshan, O., Wang, Y., Bellini, L., Behringer, T., Silber, J. H. (2007). Mortality Among Hospitalized Medicare Beneficiaries in the First 2 Years Following ACGME Resident Duty Hour Reform. JAMA 298: 975-983 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Volpp, K. G., Rosen, A. K., Rosenbaum, P. R., Romano, P. S., Even-Shoshan, O., Canamucio, A., Bellini, L., Behringer, T., Silber, J. H. (2007). Mortality Among Patients in VA Hospitals in the First 2 Years Following ACGME Resident Duty Hour Reform. JAMA 298: 984-992 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Horwitz, L. I., Krumholz, H. M., Green, M. L., Huot, S. J. (2006). Transfers of patient care between house staff on internal medicine wards: a national survey.. Arch Intern Med 166: 1173-1177 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Gurses, A. P., Xiao, Y. (2006). A Systematic Review of the Literature on Multidisciplinary Rounds to Design Information Technology. J. Am. Med. Inform. Assoc. 13: 267-276 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Arora, V, Johnson, J, Lovinger, D, Humphrey, H J, Meltzer, D O (2005). Communication failures in patient sign-out and suggestions for improvement: a critical incident analysis. Qual Saf Health Care 14: 401-407 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Ludmerer, K. M., Johns, M. M. E. (2005). Reforming Graduate Medical Education. JAMA 294: 1083-1087 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Van Eaton, E. G., Horvath, K. D., Pellegrini, C. A. (2005). Professionalism and the Shift Mentality: How to Reconcile Patient Ownership With Limited Work Hours. Arch Surg 140: 230-235 [Full Text]