Hospitalist career decisions among internal medicine residents

John T. Ratelle, Denise M. Dupras, Patrick Alguire, Philip Masters, Arlene Weissman, Colin P. West

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

11 Scopus citations

Abstract

Background: Hospital medicine is a rapidly growing field of internal medicine. However, little is known about internal medicine residents' decisions to pursue careers in hospital medicine (HM). Objective: To identify which internal medicine residents choose a career in HM, and describe changes in this career choice over the course of their residency education. DESIGN: Observational cohort using data collected from the annual Internal Medicine In-Training Examination (IM-ITE) survey. PARTICIPANTS: 16,781 postgraduate year 3 (PGY-3) North American internal medicine residents who completed the annual IM-ITE survey in 2009-2011, 9,501 of whom completed the survey in all 3 years of residency. MAIN MEASSURES: Self-reported career plans for individual residents during their postgraduate year 1 (PGY-1), postgraduate year 2 (PGY-2) and PGY-3. KEY RESULTS: Of the 16,781 graduating PGY-3 residents, 1,552 (9.3 %) reported HM as their ultimate career choice. Of the 951 PGY-3 residents planning a HM career among the 9,501 residents responding in all 3 years, 128 (13.5 %) originally made this decision in PGY-1, 192 (20.2 %) in PGY-2, and 631 (66.4 %) in PGY-3. Only 87 (9.1 %) of these 951 residents maintained a career decision of HM during all three years of residency education. CONCLUSIONS: Hospital medicine is a reported career choice for an important proportion of graduating internal medicine residents. However, the majority of residents do not finalize this decision until their final year.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)1026-1030
Number of pages5
JournalJournal of general internal medicine
Volume29
Issue number7
DOIs
StatePublished - Jul 2014

Keywords

  • graduate medical education
  • hospital medicine
  • physician workforce

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Internal Medicine

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Hospitalist career decisions among internal medicine residents'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this