“My own bias is that they’re probably close enough that they don’t need an extra year of training, but they’re not quite there,” he says.
As a result, UCSF’s HM division developed these strategies to augment hospitalists’ ICU skills:
- A hospitalist mini-college: a small group, hands-on experience, with one full day in the ICU, added to its annual CME course in October (www.ucsfcme. com/2009/MDM09P01A.pdf); and
- The creation of a critical care/hos-pital medicine fellowship that will launch in 2009.
By improving their ICU skills, hospitalists can form collaborative partnerships with their intensivist colleagues—both on the unit and in the critical care committees. This team approach can help their hospitals achieve the attributes of successful intensive care units.
“We have to acknowledge there’s no magic in being a hospitalist or a critical care specialist,” Dr. Axon says. “Individual decisions for individual patients, and the ways in which we all work together to systematize care, are the real differences that affect outcomes.” TH
Gretchen Henkel is a freelance writer based in California and a frequent contributor to The Hospitalist.
References
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- Leapfrog Group, The Leapfrog Group Fact Sheet, May 2002. Available at www.leapfroggroup.org/FactSheets/LF_FactSheet.pdf. Last accessed May 28, 2008.