PROFESSIONHospitalists: The next generationAs the number of inpatient physicians booms, a new resident training track boosts the quest to be recognized as medicine's latest specialty.By Myrle Croasdale, amednews staff. May 23/30, 2005. Tara Schulz, MD, a third-year internal medicine resident, has experience under her belt that hospitalist Win Whitcomb, MD, would have been grateful to have the first time he faced a grieving family. Dr. Schulz already has been called in to talk with terminally ill patients and their families. Most recently she spoke with an end-stage cancer patient about his options and discussed home hospice care with his family. Those experiences at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center have made her confident that she'll be able to handle tough situations when she begins her first hospitalist job this summer. For Dr. Whitcomb -- now 13 years into his career -- those are areas where he found himself stumbling as a new hospitalist. The first time he was confronted with the death of a patient he had not been treating, the patient's family was deeply upset with how he handled the situation. "I felt uncomfortable, went into the room and didn't make eye contact with the family," he said. "I listened for heart tones, checked the pupils and left the death note in the chart." Dr. Schulz is one of the University of Colorado's first internal medicine residents to participate in a hospitalist track that started in July 2004. Palliative and perioperative care are among the skills that the new specialty track focuses on to ensure that hospitalists are prepared when they start their first jobs. Understanding hospital systems and learning how to partner with pharmacists, nurses, hospital administrators and other physicians as a team is also part of the training. Dr. Schulz knows that teamwork will be key as she starts her first job at Denver Health. [...]Full text of American Medical News content is available to AMA members and paid subscribers.
Copyright 2005 American Medical Association. All rights reserved.
|
The doctors are in the house
The AMA's House of Delegates is holding its Interim Meeting Nov. 7-10 in Houston, addressing issues such as health system reform and physician payment. Meeting coverage - Slideshow Feature articlesHealth reform review The Massachusetts experience Litigation stress Being sued is personal as well as professional Comprehensive coverage
Most-viewed
Nov. 9 issueHouse option for public plan wouldn't limit physician pay to Medicare rates New database for out-of-network pay set to replace disputed Ingenix system Columns and series
From the vault: 5 years agoGenetic testing issues land in primary care practices Nov. 8, 2004 
|
SHARE
