Hospital medicine

Hospitalist
Occupation
Names
  • Physician
  • Surgeon
Occupation type
Specialty
Activity sectors
Medicine, Surgery
Description
Education required
Fields of
employment
Hospitals, Clinics

Hospital medicine is a medical specialty that exists in some countries as a branch of family medicine or internal medicine, dealing with the care of acutely ill hospitalized patients. Physicians whose primary professional focus is caring for hospitalized patients only while they are in the hospital are called hospitalists.[1] Originating in the United States, this type of medical practice has extended into Australia and Canada. The vast majority of physicians who refer to themselves as hospitalists focus their practice upon hospitalized patients. Hospitalists are not necessarily required to have separate board certification in hospital medicine.

The term hospitalist was first coined by Robert Wachter and Lee Goldman in a 1996 New England Journal of Medicine article.[2] The scope of hospital medicine includes acute patient care, teaching, research, and executive leadership related to the delivery of hospital-based care. Hospital medicine, like emergency medicine, is a specialty organized around the location of care (the hospital), rather than an organ (like cardiology), disease (like oncology), or a patient’s age (like pediatrics).[3] The emergence of hospital medicine in the United States can be compared and contrasted with the parallel development of acute medicine in the United Kingdom, reflecting health system differences.[4]

  1. ^ Pantilat, Steve (February 2006). "What is a Hospitalist?". The Hospitalist. The Society of Hospital Medicine. Retrieved 1 March 2017.
  2. ^ Wachter R; Goldman L (1996). "The emerging role of "hospitalists" in the American health care system". N Engl J Med. 335 (7): 514–7. doi:10.1056/NEJM199608153350713. PMID 8672160.
  3. ^ "SHM". www.hospitalmedicine.org. Retrieved 10 April 2018.
  4. ^ Wachter RM; Bell D (2012). "Renaissance of hospital generalists". BMJ. 344: e652. doi:10.1136/bmj.e652. PMID 22331278. S2CID 206896335.