Hospital medicine in the United States is the discipline concerned with the medical care of acutely ill hospitalized patients. Physicians whose primary professional focus is hospital medicine are called hospitalists; this type of medical practice has extended beyond the US into Canada. The practical effect of the hospitalist is to act as transition coordinator and case manager, due to the tremendous growth in medical knowledge and resultant number of medical specialists.
The term hospitalist was first coined by Robert Wachter and Lee Goldman in a 1996 New England Journal of Medicine article. Hospitalist activities may include patient care, teaching, research, and leadership related to hospital care. Hospital medicine, like emergency medicine, is a specialty organized around a site of care (the hospital), rather than an organ (like cardiology), a disease (like oncology), or a patient’s age (like pediatrics).
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Famous quotes containing the words hospital and/or medicine:
“The sun his hand uncloses like a statue,
Irrevocably: thereby such light is freed
That all the dingy hospital of snow
Dies back to ditches.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“Socialized medicine, some still cry, but it’s long been socialized, with those covered paying for those who are underinsured. American medicine is simply socialized badly, penny wise and pound foolish.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)