What’s in a name – defining hospitalists in Canada

Over the past two decades, delivery of inpatient care at acute care institutions has changed dramatically in Canada, with fewer family doctors following their patients in hospitals and the emergence of a growing number of hospitalists. Despite this growth, there is no uniform understanding of who hospitalists are, what they do and what types of clinical and non-clinical competencies constitute the field of hospital medicine. For example, in western Canada, hospitalists are primarily considered to be family doctors who have focused their practices to the hospital setting, whereas in eastern Canada, the working definition is broader and includes individuals of varying training backgrounds such as general internal medicine and even pediatrics. In my experience, hospitalists are still an unknown entity for many patients and their families, policymakers and even hospital administrators, who frequently mistaken hospitalists for “residents”, “interns” and“house doctors”.

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