Summary of Standards
Patients come to the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center as partners in clinical research, which is designed to clarify mechanisms of disease, test techniques for diagnosing disease, and evaluate treatments.
Following review of their protocols for scientific quality and the protection of research subjects, clinical investigators design and implement their research efforts with the goal of generalizable knowledge that may benefit future patients with disease, if not the research subjects themselves.
In 2000, the Medical Executive Committee developed Standards for Clinical Research to assure high-quality intramural clinical research programs. In 2006, the Medical Executive Committee approved and adopted the following Standards for Patient Care to foster commitment across the NIH institutes and centers to excellence in the care of patients while they are serving as research subjects at the NIH Clinical Center.
Each institute and center will conduct assessments of practitioner competency at initial credentialing and during recredentialing cycles, using quantitative measures.
All relevant staff constituting a multidisciplinary team will conduct clinical rounds with each primary care team at least weekly.
Each institute will conduct regular patient record reviews among other strategies to ensure that practitioners provide high quality medical documentation.
The NIH institutes and centers will conduct Quality Assurance/Quality Improvement Rounds at least once monthly to review occurrences and complications of procedures that caused—or had the potential to cause—patient harm.
Physicians, dentists, other licensed independent practitioners, and nurses will conduct preadmission planning for each scheduled patient admission.
When appropriate for patient care, NIH clinical staff will use treatment guidelines that are endorsed by national organizations and/or developed by specialists in the NIH institutes and centers.
The NIH clinical staff will prepare for referring physicians a concise summary of each patient's evaluation, treatment, and management recommendations and will provide this within a week of patient discharge—or earlier if necessary for appropriate continuity of care. At discharge, we will provide to patients written documentation that includes their discharge instructions, medications list, and a contact phone number at the Clinical Center.
Great Teachers Lectures and Medical and Ethics Grand Rounds should continue and offer CME
credit to those attending.
