The empathy and quality of communication between the physician and patient is believed to correlate with patient satisfaction and knowledge of the diagnoses and treatment plan. Examining patients’ understanding of their plan can allow providers to better aid patients upon their discharge from the hospital in the hopes of improving home care compliance. We sought to evaluate factors that we hypothesized to have an impact on a patient’s ability to understand their medical management plan in the inpatient setting. Over a 14-month period, patients were given a 10-question survey during their stay on the inpatient medical units at a safety-net tertiary care community hospital. The survey was given to patients to self-complete after our research team introduced it. A total of 366 patients were surveyed. Of the patients surveyed, more than two-thirds of participants had a clear idea of the management plan for their condition (68.5%), while 3.1% had no knowledge of their management plan. Significant associations between knowledge of the management plan and participants knowing their attending physician’s name ( P < .0005), participants having a primary care physician ( P < .0001), and educational background ( P < .0387) were found. These assessed factors can be addressed with quality communication and a strong patient–physician relationship. Accomplishing these 2 objectives with the gained knowledge of patient beliefs and perceptions from our study will likely lead to the patient having a much clearer idea of how their medical condition is being treated by his/her team and have overall positive health implications.

Dynamic imaging of heart valves and specifically prosthetic valves is a central benefit of echocardiography. Most bioprosthetic heart valves degenerate over a given time and hence require repeat valve replacement which carries a significant risk of morbidity and mortality. Reoperation is the standard of care and may still be required after the first successful surgery due to complications disrupting either mechanical or bioprosthetic valves. Such complications can be delayed or even prevented if optimal prosthesis selection is individualized according to patients’ medical and postimplantation follow-up. We present the case of an 84-year-old woman where an open-heart valve-in-valve approach, implanting a mechanical valve in a failed bioprosthetic valve, produced a unique image on transthoracic echocardiography which needs to be recognized by imagers for appropriate patient diagnosis and management.