scope of pmr knowledge

[daphilster]

What basic medical knowledge/skills set do you retain as a practicing physiatrist?

You know how ortho's tend to forget their int medicine, and psychiatrist can let go of just about everything, etc. Similarly, as a practicing PMR doc, do you still use a lot of the internal medicine you learned in school?

I would think the topics you need to remember are anatomy, neurology, pharm, etc... but not too much pathology or medicine(renal, resp, cardio, etc).

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[drusso]

I'm still in my PM&R residency so most of my internal medicine from internship is still pretty fresh. I find that most physiatrists are pretty comfortable with "bread and butter" general hospital medicine---pneumonias, chest pain, UTI's, altered mental status, etc, but have a pretty low threshold to get consultants on the case. Patients undergoing inpatient rehabilitation are usually still quite brittle and a major nosocomial illness can have profound effects on their long term functional potential.

 

[mxk]

Depends on how much you want to retain. If you choose an out patient set up, there is obviously less medicine involved. If you do in patient rehab with sci patients on vents and post stroke labile hypertension and post transplant patients, you will use more medicine.

It also depends on the amount of liability one wants to assume.

I believe a good physiatrist should be able to evaluate the complete patient, medical issues included, but know when to call upon acute care specialists. (the same goes for all md's, psych included )

mxk pgy2