FP Report -- March 1999
If you get out of hospital care, what do you lose?
Cauthen"A lot of doctors nationally are giving up hospital care," said family physician Don Cauthen, M.D., of Scott and White Clinic, the largest group practice in Texas. "We think that's a political mistake."
Cauthen, of Temple, Texas, is Scott and White Clinic's family practice chair, coordinating the work of 95 FPs in the central clinic in Temple and 18 regional clinics.
All the FPs do hospital work. Some take one-week stints as short-term hospitalists and some make traditional hospital rounds.
Cauthen listed what family physicians lose if they give up hospital care:
- skills honed in the hospital;
- interaction with other specialists, which typically concerns seriously ill patients and committee work;
- involvement in committee decisions; and
- the change of pace the hospital offers, helping prevent burnout from the clinic.
"If you get out of hospital care, you even lose the language a little," said Cauthen. "It seems foreign to you, and you tend to view in-hospital care in a magical way. But if you're in the midst of it, you know it's just medicine."
FP Report is published by the AAFP News Department. Copyright © 1999 by American Academy of Family Physicians.
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