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- Jan 27, 2011
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The answer is obvious... Internal Medicine! How can you even begin to practice good medicine as a IM subspecialist (cards, gi, heme-onc) if you aren't a great internist? Internists are the only doc who truly have to know something about nearly every area of aspect of medical care from pathophys to dx, to management! and much much more.
Actually you are describing anesthesiologists. They act as every doc in the OR except surgeon while at the same time having to know anesthesiology and what's going on in the surgery. They manage patients in the PACU (w often sick patients because all patients go to PACU if there's no ICU availability). And anesthesiologists as far as I know are the only ones who only need to do 1 year of crit care for fellowship instead of two for everyone else. In terms of completeness anesthesiologist fit the bill the most. Most surgeons are awful at medicine stuff and most IM docs do not know much about surgery. And most doctors in the hospital are pretty clueless about anesthesiology..