Primary Care

[stonewall22]

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Do many women use their OB/Gyn as primary care physician? How much primary care OB/Gyn do?

 

[chrisisinnocent]

Too many and too much.

 

[pernambucoetc]

I'm an MS-1, so I'm just passing on what I've been told, but we had a panel of ob/gyns talk about their practices today and they seemed to be in agreement that the general ob/gyns are the "point of entry" for many women into the healthcare system, meaning they give flu shots, take BPs and check blood glucose but they don't necessarily manage respiratory illnesses, hypertension or diabetes. If they see a patient with a non-gyn problem which needs treatment, they might treat the patient themselves or, perhaps more commonly, they might refer the patient to an internist or a specialist. It sounded like given the fact that they see many of their patients yearly, they were frequently exposed to general primary care issues but that they didn't necessarily manage all such conditions themselves.

It's also worth noting that they pointed out the various opportunities for subspecialization within ob/gyn (gyn-onc, maternal-fetal medicine, reproductive endocrinology, etc), so if you don't like primary care, it seems like going down that road would provide you with some options, too.

 

[stonewall22]

I'm an MS-1, so I'm just passing on what I've been told, but we had a panel of ob/gyns talk about their practices today and they seemed to be in agreement that the general ob/gyns are the "point of entry" for many women into the healthcare system, meaning they give flu shots, take BPs and check blood glucose but they don't necessarily manage respiratory illnesses, hypertension or diabetes. If they see a patient with a non-gyn problem which needs treatment, they might treat the patient themselves or, perhaps more commonly, they might refer the patient to an internist or a specialist. It sounded like given the fact that they see many of their patients yearly, they were frequently exposed to general primary care issues but that they didn't necessarily manage all such conditions themselves.

It's also worth noting that they pointed out the various opportunities for subspecialization within ob/gyn (gyn-onc, maternal-fetal medicine, reproductive endocrinology, etc), so if you don't like primary care, it seems like going down that road would provide you with some options, too.

Actually, I was thinking also doing primary care would be nice...a specialization with primary care and surgery...plus getting to be a part of some of the happiest times of peoples lives.

 

[pernambucoetc]

I'm with you, then, stonewall. My top two contenders at the moment (subject to change, of course) are family medicine and ob/gyn. Ob/gyn appeals to me for the chance to develop the close, long-term relationships with patients that you can get in a good primary care setting but at the same time to have a particular corner of the medical world to call home.

To hear these docs describe it, they had a choice as to how much primary care they did. It seemed most of them weren't really interested in managing chronic non-gyn problems, but that they had the opportunity to do some of that if they wanted, which sounds nice to me.

 

[Global Disrobal]

Often many women do not have a regular physician as they perceive themselves to be in good health & only report to an OB/GYN for annual exams and contraceptive measures. Similarly, many women do not initiate physician care until they become pregnant. These are two of the top reasons that OB/GYN's become the entry point for care and get to practice primary care.

Many times, as you'll notice on your clerkships, medical problems such as HTN, DM get unmasked during pregnancy and managed accordingly. Depending on the level of complexity, some OB/GYN's will manage the problem themselves (after delivery or the annual exam) and hence establish the primary care component you're speaking about.

I think that FP or OB/GYN will afford you the opportunity to establish long term relationships with your patients. The questions you'll have to answer (to yourself) while going through clerkships is what suits you best? OB/GYN can have too much surgical intervention for your taste, and similarly FP can have too much of a clinical/outpatient setting for your taste.

Nonetheless, good luck with the search and let us know what happens 🙂