what's the view on hospitalists?

I think being a hospitalist would be a great field. It just depends on what you like to do. I know many people who love being a hospitalist. It is kinda like being an inpatient ER doc (shift work, variety of cases, no clinic or overhead) but at the same time having continuity of care.

I've never ever heard of anybody making fun of a hospitalist. Almost everyone in other fields would love to have more.

There are also some that have experience being a hospitalist and do not like it. I encourage you to read the thread, "specialties that can lead to clinical and non-clinical careers". It should be one of the 1st few on the forum list. There is some good discussion on the topic.

Check out http://www.hospitalmedicine.org for additional information.

The hospitalist is a relatively really new concept, and I think it is still evolving. I've had several people tell me that it is transitional job for many people, and others tell me that it will burn you out quickly (depending on the person). I've also met some hospitalists that are deliriously happy with their jobs.

finnpipette said:

I know a lot of people make fun of hospitalists, but it seems great. Work with sicker patients in in-patient care. There is continuity of care from the ER, admissions, etc. A lot of out-patient internists do weekends/nights at hospitals to keep their clinical skills sharp. Seems like working in a hospital setting would keep you one your toes, sharp, etc. Any thoughts on why it would better/not as good as general IM?

Click to expand...

I've been a hospitalist now for about 1-1/2 years. Where I practice (bay area), hospitalists are held in high esteem among their colleagues for various reasons. The hospitalist movement pretty much started here (Bob Wachter at UCSF coined the term hospitalist) and there are some pretty frickin' smart people going into it as the bay area is home to some top notch schools and residency programs. Because it is an evolving field, however, perceptions of hospitalists are regionally dependent. Some of my friends practice in rural hospitals with newly started hospitalist programs and physicians of questionable quality. Others work for large hospitalist management companies who's sole mission is to provide MD's for the meat-grinder and burn them out in 1 or 2 years.
Job satisfaction and respect is definitely site/regional/location specific but will definitely standardize as the hospitalist movement becomes more firmly entrenched. Personally, I love my job and cannot see myself doing anything else (I was formerly anti-hospital during residency and wanted to go into primary care). Nowhere else in internal medicine does a job offer above average pay, steady work hours (shift work), no call, and minimal paperwork for newly minted grads.
My advice to future hospitalists would be to look closely at the group you're joining. Lots of management companies like IPC, etc. entice young grads. with promises of high salaries and travel, but crush them with unreasonable workloads and burn them out. My group is local, small, well-established, and most importantly has very low turnover (some of the docs have stayed for over a decade now).
Whatever the case, hospitalists are the fastest growing job market in medicine today and I don't see this trend reversing anytime soon.