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Is 'Hospitalist' an American thing? I'm afraid the word grates on my European ears.
by jimnotgym 11mo ago
Is 'Hospitalist' an American thing? I'm afraid the word grates on my European ears.
- andrewrn 11mo agoIt's widely used here state-side, yeah.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 11mo agoNever heard it in my part of America
- AnimalMuppet 11mo agoI have, but only because my brother-in-law is one. If he weren't, I most likely wouldn't have heard of it either.
- WaltPurvis 11mo agoSimilarly, my sister-in-law is a hospitalist, so I've come to consider it a commonly used and widely known term, but now that I think about it I don't believe I've ever heard anyone use the word except in conversations with my sister-in-law and brother.
- rectang 11mo agoI learned it when a family member wound up in the hospital and had a hospitalist assigned.
- nradov 11mo agoHospitalist is a recognized medical speciality with their own national society and NUCC provider taxonomy code 208M00000X. https://www.hospitalmedicine.org/about-shm/what-is-a-hospitalist/ https://www.hospitalmedicine.org/about-shm/what-is-a-hospita...
- jimnotgym 11mo agoThanks, but that doesn't really answer my question. It demonstrates that it is a thing in America, but for it to be an exclusively American thing I would really need some confirmation that it is not widely used in other places. Cheers for whoever downvoted, would love to understand why asking a question gets a downvote?
- stephen_g 11mo agoFor another data point, I'm in Australia and with quite a lot of medical contacts (my wife is a speech pathologist, sister an anaesthetist, and have friends who are nurses), I've literally never heard the term until seeing this HN title either.
- bo1024 11mo agoYes, and the term didn't exist 30 years ago. It's a relatively recent thing, but very widespread now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hospital_medicine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hospital_medicine
- kbelder 11mo agoIt grates on my American ears as well. Never heard it before this article, and I'm hoping it's a fad word that won't leave southern CA.
- devilbunny 11mo agoQuite common across the US. It's a doctor, usually trained in internal medicine, who does not see patients in a clinic. Only in the hospital. Very few general medicine doctors see clinic patients and hospital patients these days. In subspecialties, it's still common to do both, but we've started to see OB hospitalists, and it's not unheard of for surgeons who have aged out of doing surgery (malpractice insurance becomes onerous to obtain in procedural specialties after age 70) to continue working in their former practice as clinic-only doctors, which allows the younger ones to stay in the OR (which is where the surgeon makes almost all of their money) rather than run back to clinic fifteen minutes down the road to see routine follow-ups.
- themadturk 11mo agoI first encountered it in 2009, in Seattle, when I spent time in a hospital. I'd never heard the term before...but then, I'd never spent time in a hospital before, either.
- wisty 11mo agoA senior generalist hospital doctor. They aren't traditional specialists but for pay / prestige / political reasons they are recognised as specialists (to recognise their level of training and experience and the importance of their role).
- mcmoor 11mo agoAny X-ist name now grate my ears, especially when it's new. Always seems like an ugly patchwork before a "proper" name is coined.