Translational Patient Care:  A New Model for Inpatient Care in the 21st Century

A true paradox exists in American hospital medicine: although we have more medical knowledge and better technology, there is evidence that inpatient medical care is becoming more disjointed and health care providers are experiencing increasing degrees of disconnection from their patients. To address this, we propose a new discipline of translational patient care. Traditionally, translational research has been somewhat narrowly conceived as the process of bringing discoveries from the bench to the bedside. We propose to expand this definition to include bringing to the patient care process the knowledge gained in the laboratory of the social sciences, namely, medical economics, studies of organizational culture, human performance, and error reduction research. Using the translational patient care paradigm, we propose a new collaborative inpatient model that could simultaneously reconnect health care providers with their patients, heighten patient safety and quality of care, enhance resident education, decrease hospital costs, and raise the level of satisfaction among patients and health care providers.