Patient Education

Hospitalists are physicians who base their entire practice on the care of the hospitalized patient. The discipline of hospital medicine grew out of the increasing complexity of patients requiring hospital care and the need for dedicated clinicians to oversee their management. The hospitalist model supplanted the traditional method of caring for hospitalized patients, which was often done by clinicians also seeing ambulatory patients or with other clinical obligations that limited their ability to provide the intensity of care often required by these patients. By focusing their practice on this specific group of patients, hospitalists gain specialized knowledge in managing very ill patients and are able to provide high-quality, evidence-based, and efficient patient and family-centered care in hospital settings. By being based in the hospital, they are more available for discussions and one-on-one interactions with patients, family and staff. They are experts in both the acute treatment needs of the ill patient as well as their social and post-discharge needs. Additionally, hospital medicine expanded concurrently as increasing medical complexity of surgical patients. Many hospitalists help provide medical care for surgical patients through consult or co management relationships.