Hospitalists

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directdoc

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I have a few questions on how the job of a hospitalist works.

1. If you want to be a pediatric hospitalist, do you just do your regular pediatric residency of 3 years? Is there any other training you need to be a hospitalist?

2. How does the salary work? Do you get paid with a base salary or per patient? Obviously its not like private practice because its much less business oriented. On this note, who takes care of all the business parts if you're working in a hospital.

3. Most of the hospitalist jobs tend to be Internal Medicine. How difficult is it to find a hospitalist job in pediatrics? Obviously jobs are very limited. So is it pretty much impossible to find one?

4. Many hospitalist jobs have 7 days on/ 7 days off with 12 hour shifts. What do you do during this shifts...make rounds?

I know its a lot of questions, but I haven't heard much about hospitalists' jobs. Any help would be great.

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Hey, I just had a long talk with my attending about this last week.

1) I'm sorry to admit but I'm week on what pediatric hospitalists do and so was my attending (Internal Medicine). Basically all he knew was that the positions do exist, but they're not as well organized as IM or FP Hospitalists. But yes, completion of a residency should be more than enough. I know there's some talk about adding a Hospitalist fellowship/focus option, for Medicine, but that's not standard yet.

2) Just wanted to note you can still be "private practice" and be a Hospitalist. Instead of having the Hospital hire you as an individual, some hospitalists hire a Hospitalist Private Practice Group to do the work.

3) I don't think it's possible, but from what I got, you'd probably have to be at a larger institution to be a "dedicated" Peds hospitalist.

4) A lot of places use the Hospitalist service to train their residents, so that may be a big part of your job. But essentially, yes, you'd round on all the patients you're responsible for, write/change orders, admit/discharge patients (which includes notifying their PCP), call in and discuss consults if required. And of course, your schedule will vary based on how call/night call works at your institituion.
 
4) A lot of places use the Hospitalist service to train their residents, so that may be a big part of your job. But essentially, yes, you'd round on all the patients you're responsible for, write/change orders, admit/discharge patients (which includes notifying their PCP), call in and discuss consults if required. And of course, your schedule will vary based on how call/night call works at your institituion.

I haven't seen that at any of the places I've been to. Normally they have their own services to which they admit patients, and they have minimal contact with residents and medical students.

If they were doing that they would be no different from an Internal Medicine attending.
 
3) I don't think it's possible, but from what I got, you'd probably have to be at a larger institution to be a "dedicated" Peds hospitalist.

So the only place to find a peds hospitalist would be at a children's hospital?
 
So the only place to find a peds hospitalist would be at a children's hospital?

It's a volume thing. Most community hospitals don't have enough of a peds census to justify pediatric hospitalists.
 
So the only place to find a peds hospitalist would be at a children's hospital?

They are seen in other places. Some major cities will have enough peds population in certain hospitals to justify it. In Denver there is a hospitalist group that covers 8 or 9 hospitals. They may only have 5-6 kids at each so it involves a lot of driving. The same group runs a PICU and an adult ICU that does pediatric trauma neither at a Children's hospital.

David Carpenter, PA-C
 
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