Can EMD's do FM?

Why would you want to?

I guess there is nothing that prevents you as a licensed physician from opening up a general medicine clinic. I don't think you could call yourself a family physician without board certification. Still, you could call it "Urgent Care" or something like that.

 

If you want to do family medicine, then you should do a residency in family medicine.

There is a reason why FP's shouldn't staff ED's, and there is a reason why EP's shouldn't staff family medicine clinics.

 

Can an EM physician do primary care ? Yes.

'family practice' in the sense of advertising this on your shingle: No.

There are EM trained physicians who opened a primary care practice once they didn't care to work shifts anymore. I know one guy who does nothing but 'weight loss management' within a multispecialty group these days.

There are only few things you need the formal qualification of family practice board certification for. Mainly OB related stuff. If you don't want to deliver babies, depending on the community you are in, you should be able to get admitting priviledges at a hospital (or even better, find a hospital with a hospitalist service so you don't need to cover your own inpatients).

In the end, you are a 'physician and surgeon' and your scope of practice is what you make out of it. There might be only limited opportunities to be employed outside of your area of training, if you develop your own practice you can do what you want, particularly if you decide to go a bit outside of the competitive urban/suburban environments.

The only two factors that limit your scope of practice as a physician are:

- malpractice insurance: If you can't convince your insurer that you are qualified for the service you want to provide, they won't insure you (and you would be a fool to offer this service/procedure anyway).

- hospital priviledges: In order to be on the 'panel' for many commercial insurers as a PCP you either need to be on the medical staff of a hospital and hold admitting priviledges, or you need to have a formal agreement with someone who does. Depending on the community you are in, they might not let you on staff in anything but your specialty of residency.

 

From most most of the states' perspectives, you are granted a license for medicine and surgery. End of story. In theory, you could go practice anywhere in that state that will hire you.

In reality, jobs are limited by supply and demand. ie, in an inner city busy trauma center, they may refuse to hire anything but board certified/residency trained EM docs. Also, in an suburban environment, they may not hire anything but board certified/residency trained FM docs. If you go out in the middle of nowhere, where areas are desperate, you may be able to go a job in a small ED as an FP doc or in a generalist clinic as an EM doc. However, I would not bank your future on this.

A more realistic approach would be to soul search about the specialty your most interested in, including the likelihood of "burnout" in EM, and go for that specialty.

It sounds like the first question you're going to have answer is: do I want to go to medical school?

mike