title: Award incentives to improve quality care in internal medicine.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Award incentives encourage higher standards of personal performance, which closely reflects the quality of patient care. We report the development, implementation, and success of our internal medicine department awards program.
  
  
  METHODS
  An anonymous pre award survey collected responses to understand the need for an awards program in our department. Five awards were celebrated. An anonymous post award survey collected responses to evaluate the effectiveness of the program.
  
  
  RESULTS
  A total of 69% (175/253) of pre award survey responses were collected. Among those, 100% (175/175) agreed that employee recognition was important. 68% (119/175) felt that performance should be the deciding criteria for employee recognition. There was a winner in each award category. Post award survey showed 78% (102/130) agreed that the award ceremony incentivized them to increase quality of personal performance.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  In summary, we feel that this transparent, objective, and peer-nominated awards program could serve as an incentivized model for healthcare providers to elevate the standards of personal performance, which in turn will benefit the advancement of patient care.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medicine, Hospital General de la Plaza de la Salud, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, waqas.shuaib@emory.edu.
authors.forename: W
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Shuaib
authors.forename: A M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Saeed
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Shahid
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Hashmi
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Alweis
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ahmad
authors.forename: L Rosemary
authors.initials: LR
authors.lastname: Sanchez
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001363:Awards and Prizes; D003625:Data Collection; D005260:Female; D006748:Hospital Departments / Q000592:standards; D006785:Hospitals, University; D006801:Humans; D007388:Internal Medicine / Q000592:standards*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009042:Motivation; D015397:Program Evaluation; D058996:Quality Improvement