Family physicians in the hospital

[MadScientist95]

Hello everyone! Current OMS I here and I’m really interested in family medicine. I have searched and searched on this forum but could not find anything related to my question. It is my understanding that family medicine can be both inpatient and outpatient based (with some jobs involving both). I like the idea of spending some days in the clinic while others in the hospital, however, I have no idea what family physicians do while they are in the hospital? Is it essentially acting as a hospitalist? Can you work in the ICU as a family physician? What all else do they do? Thanks!

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[IntheClouds4ever]

Yes you can be a hospitalist and take care of icu patients. No limit as long as the hospital gives you privileges for things like arterial and central lines. Usually you can as long as you have x number of documented procedures in residency.. so pick an unopposed Residency and get your procedure numbers up for whatever you desire to do

 

[AMEHigh]

Yes and yes. However, it depends on the hospital.
Family medicine can do a lot. There’s a big thread about it on the MD student page.
We can do prenatal care and deliveries (some do csections), sports medicine, gyn and associated procedures (IUDs, MVAs, colposcopy, endometrial biopsy), HIV care, Hep C management and treatment, transgender care and hormone therapy, and other general procedures (injections, derm stuff, I&Ds).
You can work in urgent care, inpatient, or outpatient.

That’s a list of most common aspects of family med myself and my colleagues do, but it’s not an exhaustive list.

 

[MadScientist95]

Do you need a fellowship for any of these?

 

[IntheClouds4ever]

Do you need a fellowship for any of these?

No

 

[jurassicpark]

Family medicine can definitely work as a hospitalist. There are also traditional practices out there that still see outpatient and then admit their own patients. It will really depend on your comfort zone as a FP and your training. Some programs are not very strong with inpatient, others are phenomenal. I work alongside many FP in the hospital.

 

[madiso30]

So I'm only an OMS1 as well. I recently talked to @SLC (sorry to tag him to this but he always has great answers about FM) about this. So I like sports medicine but I'd also like some more acute stuff and have learned now that I hypothetically could have a PCP and sports clinic while working as hospitialist a couple weekends a month.

TLDR; FM can be extremely diverse

 

[Sardonix]

Check out the FM forum on SDN. They discuss stuff like this every day.

 

[SLC]

Hello everyone! Current OMS I here and I’m really interested in family medicine. I have searched and searched on this forum but could not find anything related to my question. It is my understanding that family medicine can be both inpatient and outpatient based (with some jobs involving both). I like the idea of spending some days in the clinic while others in the hospital, however, I have no idea what family physicians do while they are in the hospital? Is it essentially acting as a hospitalist? Can you work in the ICU as a family physician? What all else do they do? Thanks!

I am Family Medicine, I do both inpatient and outpatient. I don’t do ICU, but you can. My hospital is incredibly small (14 inpatient beds) and we don’t have ICU here but I have had to perform initial stabilization, central lines-start pressers, intubation and packaging for helicopter flight to tertiary care center a handful of times in the year I’ve been here.

My residency classmate went immediately to academic Inpatient medicine at an Ivy hospital, she’s doing ICU shifts there too on occasion. No fellowship.

 

[ToKingdomCome]

If you want to be a hospitalist just do IM, where inpatient medicine is more emphasized

 

[samac]

If you want to be a hospitalist just do IM, where inpatient medicine is more emphasized

I mean to be fair I think op wants to do both inpatient and outpatient.
If they want to do anything with kids/women’s health FM would be better

 

[BorntobeDO?]

One of my best friends is a hospitalist as an FM doc. He did everything at his old job but doesn't do critical care anymore. My core hospital has multiple FM docs who do both inpatient and outpatients. However the majority of inpatient service is actually covered by the IM Docs who do about 50/50 inpatient outpatient. The FM docs do about 90% outpatient with 10% inpatient.

 

[MadScientist95]

Gotcha! Both of these specialties interest me. The only thing that worries me about family med is that I hear there is a lack of interesting cases (not sure how true this is). Ideally, I would like a specialty with broadness and that would include both inpatient and outpatient care and have some interesting/excitement (such as in the ICU) sprinkled in. What would you guys suggest?

 

[MadScientist95]

I would also like to add that lifestyle is important to me. I don’t mind working 50-60 hours a week but preferably nothing more as I am wanting to get married soon and raise a family. Not sure how much of a factor this would play in deciding between the two.