Why don’t medical students want to go into general internal medicine? I must admit I really miss the exciting challenges I faced when I admitted my own patients and cared for them in the ICU and the general medicine units. But, and this is a BIG but, I don’t miss the all nighters and long weekends of call. Outpatient medicine can be very satisfying but one needs to let go of the hospital based physician identity and be comfortable with the idea of letting someone else (hospitalists) take over the care of your patients when they require hospitalization.
I think physicians specializing in outpatient internal medicine are still desperately needed to manage the complex adult patient. We bring a great fund of knowledge into the outpatient setting and I believe we can do it more efficiently than using a boatload of sub-specialists for every complicated patient.