The Hospitalist Handbook represents the culmination of several years of effort on behalf of the Internal Medicine housestaff at the University of California, San Francisco to make a thorough, yet concise, bedside guide to inpatient clinical medicine. The Hospitalist Handbook began as the Housestaff Handbook several years ago and has served as both an educational tool for its authors as well as a valuable resource for students, housestaff, and attending physicians. 

We hope anyone engaged in inpatient medicine—medical students, residents of all specialties, hospitalist physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and others—will continue to find the handbook easy to read and practical in its approach to common problems in inpatient medicine. 

We are indebted to the UCSF staff who have assisted with this book. 

The Hospitalist Handbook is a result of the efforts of many past and present housestaff and faculty in the Department of Medicine at UCSF. The following physicians have all been past contributors to the handbook: Lexmi Acharya, Kristen Adams, Uchenna Agbim, Jon Matthew Aldrich, Susan Alt, Wendy Anderson, James Andrews, Jacob Applebaum, Katie Auriemma, Sanjiv Baxi, Leila Beach, Garth Beinart, Kara Bischoff, Paul Blanc, Anna Bloxham, Robert Bronwell, Carolyn Calfee, Paul Campbell, Ethan Canin, Christopher Carlos, Larry Chang, Sumitra Chari, Herbert Chen, Tom Chen, Victor Cheng, Peter Chin-Hong, Kerry Cho, Anna Chodos, Angelo Clemenzi-Allen, Seth Cohen, Molly Conroy, Sarah Cooley, Ethan Corcoran, Henry Crevensten, Ian de Boer, Ajay Dharia, Sanket Dhruva, Kevin Duan, Fiona Dulbecco, Timur Durrani, Abigail Eastburn, Darryl Elmouchi, Sara Erickson, Charles Everett, Oren Fix, Monica Gandhi, Ravi Gar, Anil Gehi, Leslie Gillum, Karimi Gituma, Aparna Goel, Andrei Goga, Antonio Gomez, Matt Gonzales, John Gordan, Rachel Greenblatt, Michael Guarnieri, Nathan Gunn, Neha Gupta, Samir Gupta, Jennifer Guy, Lawrence Haber, Elizabeth Hardin, Steve Harr, Meredith Heller, Carolyn Hendrickson, Jared Herr, Mary Beth Humphrey, Jimee Hwang, Saraswat Iobst, Manisha Israni-Jiang, Sina Jamé, Andy Josephson, Gregory Judson, Hooman Kamel, Evie Kalmar, Fatima Karaki, Thomas Kearney, Sumana Kesh, Sarah Kim, Todd Kim, Kiran Khush, Ajay Kirtane, Drew Klein, Andrew Ko, Tejaswi Kompala, Catherine Koss, Era Kryzhanovskaya, Carla Kuon, Cindy Lai, Jennifer Lai, Paul Larsen, Catherine Lau, Adam Lauring, Elizabeth Le, Lorriana Leard, Katy Lease, Natalie Lee, Sei Lee, Josh Lehrer-Graiwer, Amy Levin, Hana Lim, Debbie Lindes, Pam Ling, Dandan Liu, Kathleen Liu, Raymond Liu, Taylor Liu, Annie Luetkemeyer, Colleen Lynch, Margaret Lynch, Kamyar Madani, Erika Mak, Gabriel Mannis, Jason Mansoori, Denise Marciano, Paul Marcus, Dana McGlothin, David McManus, Lynnea Mills, Bradley Monash, Somnath Mookherjee, Peter Moore, Christopher Moriates, Brian Moyers, Brian Muegge, Vivek Murthy, Deepu Nair, Jake Natalini, Anisa Nayeem, Andrew Nett, Susie Ng, Gabriel Ortiz, Justin Ortiz, Daniel Perlov, Cason Pierce, Samantha Pitts, Sunita Puri, Atif Qasim, Alvin Rajkomar, Josefa Rangel, Sumant Ranji, Rajni Rao, Sanjay Reddy, Mike Ren, Stephanie Rennke, Anne Rosenthal, Laura Rosow, Jennifer Ross, Robert Rushakoff, Kiki Rutkowski, Shobha Sadasivaiah, Lekshmi Santhosh, Urmimala Sarkar, Anne Schafer, Brian Schwartz, Sanjiv Shah, Brad Sharpe, Robin Shaw, Leslie Sheu, Mike Shiloh, Eddie Siew, Jacek Skarbinski, Sahael Stapleton, Michael Steinman, Rachel Stern, Elizabeth Stewart, Kristina Sullivan, Gregory Summerville, Laura Tarter, Larissa Thomas, Ailinh Tran, Jack Tsao, Delphine Tuot, Elizabeth Turner, Aylin Ulku, Alon Unger, Jim Uyeki, Doug White, Matt Wieduwilt, Karen Wong, Katherine Wysham, Ed Vasilevskis, Daniel Yang, Roni Zeiger, Jie Zheng, and Julie Zikherman.

The Hospitalist Handbook  is a continual work in progress. We are always looking for ways to improve the handbook’s content in order to make it more accurate, practical, and coherent, as well as concise. If you have any comments, suggestions, or corrections, please e-mail  [email protected] so that we can continue to enhance the value of this resource.