How do wards run where you are?

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DeadCactus

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Like what's the composition of a team, what are the responsibilities of each team member, who reports to who, etc.

I'm curious what the different models are.

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I'm at Virginia Tech Carilion.

A wards team here consists of:

Total of 3-4 interns, comprised of:
- 1-3 Peds interns and/or
-1-2 other interns (EM or FM)
2 upper levels
3ish med students (or PA students)
2 NPs
Attending

The residents are split up between days/night (we have a nightfloat system). There is always one upper level on days and one on nights. The interns get split up differently depending on the total number (ie at times we have an "extra" person who comes in from 11am - midnight who does admits/dc's, helps out with whatever, but who carries no patients of their own).

The interns in general write all notes and place orders on their own patients. During morning rounds, they present their patients.

The upper levels supervise the interns and thus are responsible for all the patients, but generally don't have to write notes. They help present when needed. They also call most consults.

Med students kinda tag along with the interns and pick up patients alongside of them. They present patients during morning rounds and write notes.

In general, interns and upper levels work together and then "report" to the attending together.

At night, if there is a problem with a patient on the floor the nurse is supposed to page the intern first, who can then speak with the upper level about it if needed. The upper level gets pages about admissions and alerts the intern, and they do the admission together.

The NPs are there to be awesome and help us with anything we need. They go to admissions with us, help d/c patients, help write TPN orders, etc.
 
I'm right up the road from Vita, at UVA.

We have 2 upper levels (I think they're all third years), and usually 4-5 interns, one of whom is on night float each week. Interns are from Peds, FM, and anesthesia--not sure if EM interns do wards or not.

One upper level will generally serve as the admit resident if there are any pending admissions or transfers during rounds, but this can vary. Otherwise, they follow all the patients as a pair and make sure things get done, as well as cross-cover when the interns have clinic in the afternoon.

Interns are responsible for splitting the patients among themselves. Generally, you follow who you admit while you're on call, and the patients admitted overnight are split among the remaining interns. They put in all the notes and orders on their patients, with input from the upper level, and are responsible for writing discharge summaries. They present whichever patients are not covered by med students.

There may or may not be a fourth year med student on, who functions identically to the interns, except that the upper level signs their note, and the attending then writes his or her own note on those patients.

We generally have 4 third year med students, who are split between days and night float (each student does a week of night float, but the rotation is only 3 weeks long, so there's often more than one student on nights). The students follow 2-3 patients each, and present those patients. Generally, the med students only follow the general patients, leaving the subspecialty patients for the interns, but this can vary depending on the interns, upper levels, and interest of the student. There's actually a teach resident who works in the clinic in the morning, and comes and teaches the med students in the afternoon, so that isn't necessarily the responsibility of the interns or upper levels.

The general peds attending is actually often a subspecialist--cardiology, ID, and GI attendings all serve as general wards attending throughout the year, in addition to the general pediatricians.

All pediatric patients outside of the NICU, PICU, Heme/Onc, and Surgery service are covered by the wards team, so there are actually multiple fellow/attending teams, but only one resident team (the residents on the subspecialty teams are generally only responsible for the outpatients, not the inpatients, though it varies slightly from service to service). The subspecialty services with their own teams are GI, Endocrine, Cardiology, Renal and Pulmonary.
 
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