Hospitalist: IM or EM?

[jmcappleby]

Hello everyone,

I've recently come across information about Hospitalist medicine and it seemed like an interesting path to take, if not as a permanent career, at least for a few years after residency.

I've read a lot of topics on SDN about being a Hospitalist but I was wondering if people had thoughts specifically on how it compared to Emergency Medicine.

As a background, recently our school featured a talk by a couple of EM physicians and they described what they thought the ideal personality of an EM physician would be (the usual: short attention span kinds of things...) and I figured that didn't sound at all like me so I made a mental note of putting EM farther down my list of specialties that sound interesting to me.

But the more I read about Hospitalist medicine, the more I find parallels to Emergency Medicine... maybe it's just the way the schedule works? Or does it extend beyond that - as in short-term care then hand the patient off to a specialist, etc.? Is there a big difference in the kinds of cases either one sees?

So just generally, I was wondering what people's thoughts were on Hospitalist medicine in terms of its closeness to EM. Ultimately, would you say the day to day workings of a Hostpitalist are more akin to being an Internist or is it more like being an ER Doc?

Thanks!

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[Hernandez]

they are not even remotely the same. While both have shift work, the hospitalists does take are of a panel of admitted pts until their discharge (or until their run of days is up and care is transfered to another hospitalist). Care is not "haned off to a specialist" by hospitalists, they may consult a specialist, but they don't sign out at 5pm and tell the cardiologis to finish dealing with the pt. Being a hospitalist is almost like being a permanant resident on an in-pt rotation, except your in charge, making mor money an have acces to the staff lounge where they hide the good coffee and bagels

 

[mercaptovizadeh]

Hello everyone,

I've recently come across information about Hospitalist medicine and it seemed like an interesting path to take, if not as a permanent career, at least for a few years after residency.

I've read a lot of topics on SDN about being a Hospitalist but I was wondering if people had thoughts specifically on how it compared to Emergency Medicine.

As a background, recently our school featured a talk by a couple of EM physicians and they described what they thought the ideal personality of an EM physician would be (the usual: short attention span kinds of things...) and I figured that didn't sound at all like me so I made a mental note of putting EM farther down my list of specialties that sound interesting to me.

But the more I read about Hospitalist medicine, the more I find parallels to Emergency Medicine... maybe it's just the way the schedule works? Or does it extend beyond that - as in short-term care then hand the patient off to a specialist, etc.? Is there a big difference in the kinds of cases either one sees?

So just generally, I was wondering what people's thoughts were on Hospitalist medicine in terms of its closeness to EM. Ultimately, would you say the day to day workings of a Hostpitalist are more akin to being an Internist or is it more like being an ER Doc?

Thanks!

The day to day workings are those of an inpatient internist. You don't "hand off" patients to specialists, although you can consult them of course. The major difference from traditional internal medicine is that you are bound to a shift rather than a particular patient - you leave at a particular time or thereabouts and someone replaces you to manage the patient. EM is partly primary care for those who cannot get to see an FM/IM/peds or have no insurance, partly for drug seekers, and partly for real emergencies. The only similarity to IM hospitalist is the shift work. Any overlap between the two fields has to do with the intrinsic overlaps between what EM and IM (inpatient, in this case), not the shift work. Also, EM's are in a somewhat more hectic environment and are paid somewhat better than IM hospitalists.