Comment by kbelder
It grates on my American ears as well. Never heard it before this article, and I'm hoping it's a fad word that won't leave southern CA.
It grates on my American ears as well. Never heard it before this article, and I'm hoping it's a fad word that won't leave southern CA.
I first encountered it in 2009, in Seattle, when I spent time in a hospital. I'd never heard the term before...but then, I'd never spent time in a hospital before, either.
Quite common across the US. It's a doctor, usually trained in internal medicine, who does not see patients in a clinic. Only in the hospital.
Very few general medicine doctors see clinic patients and hospital patients these days. In subspecialties, it's still common to do both, but we've started to see OB hospitalists, and it's not unheard of for surgeons who have aged out of doing surgery (malpractice insurance becomes onerous to obtain in procedural specialties after age 70) to continue working in their former practice as clinic-only doctors, which allows the younger ones to stay in the OR (which is where the surgeon makes almost all of their money) rather than run back to clinic fifteen minutes down the road to see routine follow-ups.