Australia must consider carefully the implications of developing a specialty of hospital medicine
A hospitalist is a clinician who safely manages a patient's acute hospital course and who specialises in hospital medicine, free of any compelling priorities of ambulatory care.1,2 Hospitalists work only with inpatients, taking over care from primary care physicians after admission to hospital. They are site-defined specialists with skills in general internal medicine,3 who care for patients with a wide range of organ derangements, illnesses (and ages) within the specific location of an acute hospital.
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- Division of Critical Care, Liverpool Hospital, Liverpool, NSW.
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- 2. Goldmann DR. The hospitalist movement in the United States: what does it mean for internists? Ann Intern Med 1999; 130: 326-327.
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