Is ID a Primary Care Position?

[toastedbutter]

Is Infectious Disease able to be considered a primary care field? You see all kinds of patients, inpatient and out, even surgical. But it is a specialization. The reason I ask is 1) I noticed many of the WAMCs including whether they're interested in PC or not, I guess that gives you a small leg up? and 2) I am very interested in the 3yr MD programs, many of which offer a pipeline into the same school's residency for either primary care, peds, or IM. ID is obviously IM so I want to see if I am eligible for one of these programs.

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[Goro]

My understanding was sub-specialties weren't PC

 

[Rogue42]

Primary care? No. A subspecialty of IM? Yes.

You can easily say your interested in IM because you will fulfill the school's mission / promise to place people into IM residency if that is their goal / reason for asking. It is not your fault or the school's fault that afterwards (aka in residency) you decided that you liked ID and wanted to fellowship in it.

 

[TelemarketingEnigma]

you'd be eligible by virtue of doing IM, but I have no idea if any of these programs have additional constraints (like, no plans to do fellowship, which would rule out ID). Do you actually want to do primary care though, or just shorten medical school? If the latter, you may find that these programs come at the expense of fully exploring other parts of medicine

ID itself is a subspecialty, although many ID physicians do practice some/a lot of primary care, especially if they focus on things like longitudinal HIV care where an ID physician often manages the same things a regular PCP does. You can also do HIV care without an ID fellowship though, I know a lot of IM trained physicians who just focused their practice on that without specific ID training. I'm basically in the HIV capital of the US though, that might be harder in places that see fewer cases

 

[ewax]

A lot of ID doctors act as the PCP for their HIV patients..so yes, you can practice primary care as a ID doctor.

Also, since ID pays so poorly, it isn't uncommon to see people who trained in ID working as general PCPs or hospitalists to make extra money.

 

[toastedbutter]

A lot of ID doctors act as the PCP for their HIV patients..so yes, you can practice primary care as a ID doctor.

Also, since ID pays so poorly, it isn't uncommon to see people who trained in ID working as general PCPs or hospitalists to make extra money.

Yeah high loans and dismal pay (comparatively, a consistent six figure is nothing to whine about of course) is the only reason I would even consider a different specialty. Do you need board cert in something aside from ID to do the PCP/hospitalists stuff? Does antimicrobial stewardship get you anything extra?

 

[toastedbutter]

you'd be eligible by virtue of doing IM, but I have no idea if any of these programs have additional constraints (like, no plans to do fellowship, which would rule out ID). Do you actually want to do primary care though, or just shorten medical school? If the latter, you may find that these programs come at the expense of fully exploring other parts of medicine

ID itself is a subspecialty, although many ID physicians do practice some/a lot of primary care, especially if they focus on things like longitudinal HIV care where an ID physician often manages the same things a regular PCP does. You can also do HIV care without an ID fellowship though, I know a lot of IM trained physicians who just focused their practice on that without specific ID training. I'm basically in the HIV capital of the US though, that might be harder in places that see fewer cases

Mainly interested in this to shorten medical school. Infectious disease and medical microbiology is what brought me to medicine, I'm pretty dead set on it as a specialty. But the pay is not amazing and I was one less year of tuition plus one more year of attending salary. Except for NYU most 3 yr md programs (MVW for example) are also middle tier schools which will probably be much more attainable for me once I take my MCAT.

 

[GreenDuck12]

Mainly interested in this to shorten medical school. Infectious disease and medical microbiology is what brought me to medicine, I'm pretty dead set on it as a specialty. But the pay is not amazing and I was one less year of tuition plus one more year of attending salary. Except for NYU most 3 yr md programs (MVW for example) are also middle tier schools which will probably be much more attainable for me once I take my MCAT.

Make sure you pay attention to the details of the program. Many of the three year MD programs or pipeline programs that reserve a residency position for you have specially designed components to fulfill their mission ie underserved / rural service. This could make getting the background experiences needed for a fellowship application more challenging.

 

[ewax]

Yeah high loans and dismal pay (comparatively, a consistent six figure is nothing to whine about of course) is the only reason I would even consider a different specialty. Do you need board cert in something aside from ID to do the PCP/hospitalists stuff? Does antimicrobial stewardship get you anything extra?

All ID docs need to go through IM residency first so as long as you re-certify w ABIM for the medicine part (q 10 years), you can do any kind of general medicine job you want.

Not sure if antimicrobial stewardship gets you much, volume of procedures are really the thing that pays in medicine.