Internal medicine physicians are often the first providers to encounter patients with a new diagnosis of tuberculosis. Given the public health risks of missed tuberculosis cases, assessing internal medicine residents' ability to diagnose tuberculosis is important.
Internal medicine resident knowledge and practice patterns in pulmonary tuberculosis diagnosis at 7 academic hospitals were assessed utilizing (a) a 10-item validated pulmonary tuberculosis diagnosis assessment tool and (b) a retrospective chart review of 343 patients who underwent a pulmonary tuberculosis evaluation while admitted to a resident-staffed internal medicine or infectious disease service. Our primary outcomes were the mean score and percentage of correct responses per assessment tool question, and the percentage of patients who had Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-recommended tuberculosis diagnostic tests obtained.
Of the 886 residents who received the assessment, 541 responded, yielding a response rate of 61%. The mean score on the assessment tool (SD) was 4.4 (1.6), and the correct response rate was 57% (311/541) or less on 9 of 10 questions. On chart review, each recommended test was obtained for ≤43% (148/343) of patients, other than chest x-ray (328/343; 96%). A nucleic acid amplification test was obtained for 18% (62/343) of patients, whereas 24% (83/343) had only 1 respiratory sample obtained. Twenty patients were diagnosed with tuberculosis.
Significant knowledge and practice gaps exist in internal medicine residents' abilities to diagnose tuberculosis. As residents represent the future providers who will be evaluating patients with possible tuberculosis, such deficiencies must be addressed.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 20. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 25 June 2021.
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#2,346,552
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Outputs of similar age from Open Forum Infectious Diseases
#20
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Altmetric has tracked 33,214,765 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 92nd percentile: it's in the top 10% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 6,697 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 20.5. This one has done well, scoring higher than 83% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 73 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 72% of its contemporaries.
