About one quarter (26.1 percent) of internal medicine residents believe their responsibility for patients ends at discharge, according to a survey published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
Fewer respondents (19.3 percent) felt their responsibility for patients extended beyond two weeks after discharge, according to the survey of 817 residents across nine training programs. More than half (57 percent) felt they should directly contact a patients' primary care provider at discharge, and 21.6 percent felt they should ensure patients attended follow up appointments, according to the report. The perceptions of responsibility were not linked to any specific level of training, type of program, career path or level of burnout.
This suggests there may be other factors at work, such as professional role modeling, that shape the perceptions of responsibility, the researchers suggested. However, the high levels of variability in responses indicate there is currently no one dominant school of thought as to what role internal medicine physicians should play in care transitions.
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