Published in:
01-07-2014 | Original Research
Hospitalist Career Decisions Among Internal Medicine Residents
Published in: Journal of General Internal Medicine | Issue 7/2014
Login to get accessABSTRACT
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 Of the 951 PGY-3 residents planning a HM career among the 9,501 residents responding in all 3 years, 128 (13.5 %) originally made this decision in PGY-1, 192 (20.2 %) in PGY-2, and 631 (66.4 %) in PGY-3.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.