Kings County Hospital Wins HHC Best Practice Award
May 2007
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From right, CIR NY V.P. Spencer Nabors, MD presents a plaque for the HHC Best Practices Award to Dr. Jeanne Macrae, Residency Program Director, and Dr. Edmund Bourke, Professor and Chair, Dept. of Medicine.
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The Department of Internal Medicine at Kings County Hospital, in Brooklyn, NY won CIR’s 2006-2007 HHC Best Practice Award of $20,000 with innovative scheduling that reduces work hours for all PGY levels.
Medicine floors now have night float coverage every night, with no overnight call. In-house call is Q5, and goes from 7 AM to 9 PM; residents have a day off each weekend, and interns have a day off either on the weekend, or during the week. During night float rotations, residents work a maximum of five nights per week, on a 13-hour shift.
Residents now work 10-12 hour days instead of 24- hour call, with more time for studying, publications, seeing family, and having a personal life. “It’s made our environment much more conducive to patient care and clinical education,” said CIR NY Vice Pres. Spencer Nabors, a PGY 3 in Internal Medicine/Emergency Medicine at Kings County.
The idea for the work hour innovations came from both housestaff and faculty. Dr. Ifeolowa Okusanya, a PGY 2 in Internal Medicine, wrote up the application for the Best Practice award, and brought it to the rest of the housestaff in the department; out of 160 residents, 135 signed on. “We realize that building on housestaff ideas is a recipe for success at all our hospitals,” said Dr. Jeanne Macrae, Residency Program Director.
After winning, housestaff came up with another innovative idea, and are using the award as seed money to create an international medicine elective away program at their hospital. Attending physicians at Kings County have shown their support for the idea, with pledges of an additional $10,000. A fundraising goal of $75,000 has been set to support the ongoing international elective away.
At a Grand Round lecture April 26, 2007, Dr. Guy Theodore presented the work of his clinic in Pignon, Haiti, where housestaff can do their elective away. In a medically underserved, rural area, Dr. Theodore’s clinic has lowered the rate of maternal and infant mortality significantly compared with Haiti’s national figures, and dramatically increased immunization rates. “Exposure to programs such as this one in Haiti can inspire residents to explore the fundamental principles of medicine as a commitment to service, which both housestaff and faculty believe are integral to comprehensive medical training,” said Dr. Nabors. For more info, see www.pignon.org.