Electives for hospitalist

[chichester]

Interested to hear from current hospitalists / others going into hospitalist - are there any electives you wish you had done, or you think would be useful to cover areas not typically taught in enough depth during residency?

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[gutonc]

Interested to hear from current hospitalists / others going into hospitalist - are there any electives you wish you had done, or you think would be useful to cover areas not typically taught in enough depth during residency?

Does your program have a "how to be ortho's b**ch" elective? Because that would be useful.

 

[rokshana]

Does your program have a "how to be ortho's b**ch" elective? Because that would be useful.

yes, that would be a helpful elective... "writing notes for billing purposes only" would be a good one as well.

 

[gutonc]

Other good electives:

"How to determine, at the time of admission, before you've even written your H&P, whether the patient will require admission for >48h and should be on inpatient status, or should be on observation status instead."

"Making friends in IR so you don't have to do any procedures"

 

[CatFactorial]

Interested to hear from current hospitalists / others going into hospitalist - are there any electives you wish you had done, or you think would be useful to cover areas not typically taught in enough depth during residency?

My program has a hospitalist elective for folks though I don't know how it is any different from gen med wards. Medical education elective? We also have a hospitalist procedure service that takes residents to get signed off on various procedures. Not sure how much any of this would apply to your situation though

 

[gutonc]

"Dodging the Administrator On Duty"

 

[DrSnips]

Look, you don't need any special electives. All you need to know is how to consult efficiently (not effectively though, that's beyond the scope of this post):

Got multiple consults to call? Well the order is important. You're gonna want to page surgery/IR first, as they are in the OR and won't call you back for several hours. ID and renal should be next, because although they'll get back to you quick, they have like a million consults, so best to be on top of the pile. Made it this far? Well it's time to call rheum, and they probably didn't remember to turn their pagers on, so you'll need to get their cell # from the operator. Hey, that's what happens when you only get consults on leap year. While working on that I recommend getting a palliative consult (if you're impressed I knew you needed one, you probably also like those magicians who use math to "guess" the number you're thinking of). Psych should be consulted last because hopefully the patient leaves AMA before psych gets a chance to demand they be put on 1:1 (uh oh, there goes your length of stay metric!)

Ok, now that you're done with all those consults it's time for the real medical decision making -- selecting a DVT ppx. If you're too lazy to look for contraindications to heparin, you can just make it SCDs, but make sure to check that the patient doesn't have BKAs, because the nurse will probably page you at 2am about that. Also, you're going to want to make sure she didn't put the SCD on a prosthetic limb. You know what, ordering heparin is probably easier, scratch the SCDs, everyone gets heparin.

So now just combine the above with whatever you remember from residency and you're good to go.

 

[obiwan]

Does your program have a "how to be ortho's b**ch" elective? Because that would be useful.

Or really any surgical subspecialty for that matter and not to mention cardiology, oncology, or hepatology. And learning how to accept transfers from outside hospital because of family request elective

In all seriousness though, being a hospitalist is just a general medicine month without a lot of the cool pathology cases that will go to the teaching teams and learning how to cover your butt

 

[aafisahar]

is this a joke? a few months on the wards prepares you for a hospitalist career. you're a highly paid intern.

few people do hospitalist money for the love of the job, it's because it pays well and gives you mad time off

 

[IM2GI]

is this a joke? a few months on the wards prepares you for a hospitalist career. you're a highly paid intern.

few people do hospitalist money for the love of the job, it's because it pays well and gives you mad time off

To the OPs question, literally your entire residency is preparing you to be a hospitalist. It is very comfortable and familiar.

As to 7 on/7 off, it is a bit of a myth that you get "mad time off"

The scourge of seven on/seven off

 

[CCM-MD]

To the OPs question, literally your entire residency is preparing you to be a hospitalist. It is very comfortable and familiar.

As to 7 on/7 off, it is a bit of a myth that you get "mad time off"

The scourge of seven on/seven off

It is mad time off. Twelve hours a day for 7 days followed by a week off means 42 hours a week on average. And depending on the gig, in many places those 12 hour days are usually 8 hour days with pager call from home for the rest of your shift. Can't call it a "lifestyle" specialty but it is definitely a specialty in which you "work hard and play hard". There are few IM subspecialties in which you can work 40 hours a week on average and make this amount of money.

 

[cestlavie]

I'm going to max out my ICU time. I don't plan on working at a hospital with an open ICU but you never know. Also a PMR or LTAC rotation... our hospitalists also round at an SNF as well as an LTAC and many are in for subacute rehab so some exposure there is useful. And the ever important hospice rotation... they expose you to the most difficult conversations that can occur in the hospital. Also try to get any certifications you can...EKG reading, stress test reading... easy way to make some extra bucks on your off time.