by Benjamin P. Geisler (ed.), Jeffrey L. Greenwald (ed.), Kathy May Tran (ed.)

Hospital medicine is rapidly growing, driven by the increasing complexity of acutely ill patients and efficiency considerations. The field has expanded significantly, with over 60,000 hospitalists in the United States, including physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants. These professionals face endless diagnostic dilemmas and management options for ever more complex patients, as well as administrative pressure to improve care quality while controlling costs. Pay-for-performance incentives and medicolegal requirements further emphasize the need for current evidence-based management.

Specialty societies provide evidence-based guidelines for clinical care. However, managing individual patients on a general medicine service often requires detailed knowledge of key studies to determine if guidelines or meta-analyses are applicable. Understanding study populations and treatment effect sizes is crucial for making personalized management decisions and guiding patients and caregivers.