How competent is a physician of a certain specialty in another specialty? i.e. Could a psychiatrist remove an appendix? Could an anesthesiologist take an H&P? Can an internist read an MRI?
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Physician competency?
Started by ihopeigetit
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All physicians are trained to do an H&P. Without regard to specialty you may request hospital privileges for any procedure for which you have been trained and cannot be denied solely because of your specialty. In practice, each specialty tends to use the skills most important and frequent in that specialty and other skills tend to atrophy.
All physicians are trained to do an H&P, but certainly many are pretty bad at it because they don't do it very often, if ever after their intern year.
The answer to your initial question is, not very competent. I don't think there are but a handful of psychiatrists that can do an appendectomy (and most were FMG surgeons that practiced over seas before coming here). Anesthesiologists do H&Ps every day as a part of their job and the vast majority of internists can not read MRIs at all (very few non-radiologists can really read MRI very well).
I'd argue that a well trained neurologist should be able to read his or her own MRIs to a reasonable level. Not as well as a radiologist with fellowship training in neuroradiology, but at a similar level to a general radiologist.
Neurologists generally are poor (but SHOULD be better) at making the diagnosis that a psychiatrist would... (and the other way around).
