Many people are unfamiliar with what a hospitalist or hospital care physician does, but these doctors truly play an integral role in improving communication and efficiency in hospital settings.

Although they choose to work in the hospital setting, many hospital care physicians are board certified in areas such as internal medicine, pediatrics, or family practice.

Essentially, hospitalists are physicians who comprehensively take care of patients in hospitals. They look at the overall picture and communicate with hospital staff, nurses, patients, and their families in order to optimize a patient’s overall care.

A hospitalist must have expertise in multiple areas of patient care, including providing treatment, diagnosing illnesses, teaching, research, and leadership in the overall care of the patient. They also create a short-term yet consistent relationship with patients throughout the duration of the patient’s hospital stay.

In other words, hospitalists are the links that bind.

A hospital care physician looks at the overall picture and communicates with hospital staff, nurses, patients, and their families in order to optimize a patient’s overall care. In this image, a male doctor is standing in hallway while using a digital tablet.

Among many other responsibilities, a hospital care physician focuses on enhancing communications among hospital staff, doctors, and families in order to optimize patient care in hospitals.

Because of the experience they gain in the hospital setting, they are highly skilled in caring for complicated cases. Among others, their roles include:

• coordinating with other physicians

• regularly communicating with family members

• following up on tests

• explaining test results to patients and their families

• answering questions from the nursing staff

• resolving problems

• working to improve communications among doctors and staff

• infection control

• focusing on improving patient safety and reducing medical errors

• maintaining communications with patients’ primary care physicians

One of our tenants here at the Shelby Macomb Medical Mall is Great Lakes Medicine Hospital Care Specialists. GLM provides high-quality care to patients at the following southeast Michigan hospital systems: Beaumont, St. John, Select, Henry Ford, Kindred, and McLaren.

For more information or assistance, call Great Lakes Medicine at 1-586-731-8400.

 

CONTACT GREAT LAKES MEDICINE