And it could mean a role shift.
“Maybe our role now becomes that we see that patient after they leave the hospital to make sure that we complete their hospital care and keep them moving in the right direction, because we don’t want them to bounce back into our hospital,” he said.
On whether all the changes in health care are good or bad for hospitalists, Dr. Wellikson said that “good is a relative term.”
“The most important thing in life is to be relevant and to be needed,” he said. “As you add on new things, you have to acquire those competencies. That’s the challenge.”
Dr. Wellikson will also discuss the expansion of hospital medicine and SHM internationally.
“We’re now working with hospitalists in Japan, in Brazil, in Holland, in Canada,” he said. “We’re working in England and Singapore. And each of these places is different.”
His talk will dovetail with a theme that is more prominent in the annual conference program this year: helping hospitalists in mid-career navigate new opportunities.
“The good news on career development is you have so many different directions you can go,” said Dr. Wellikson, pointing to hospitalists who’ve become CEOs and CMOs. But he added that these opportunities require new skills, which goes back to the importance of training.
As a hospitalist, he said, you have to “make sure that you have the ability to gather the new skills to meet new challenges. Just because you become a manager doesn’t mean that magically you know how to manage. How do you keep your skills up as your scope expands or your opportunities grow? What happens more often in hospital medicine is that hospitalists get promoted into a position that can be overwhelming, which leads to burnout or career problems.”
Future Challenges for Hospital Medicine
Tuesday, 9:35-10:00 a.m.
Palms Ballroom
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