Pros & Cons of GIM

[Scholastica]

I'm an Internal Medicine resident who's struggling to figure out what subspecialty to apply for.

 

I'm considering GIM because of the flexibility & portability of the career, but could somebody, who is more familiar about GIM, enlighten me with the pros & cons?

 

Is the job satisfaction fairly high, or is there a sense that they are glorified GP's especially at an academic centre?

 

What kind of cases are referred to GIM's for outpatient consult?

 

To run an ICU in a community, do you need a GIM plus an ICU fellowship?

 

Thanks.

[leviathan]

GIMs definitely see patients in community hospitals if they have an open ICU. At least in the community hospitals they seem to be well regarded, but I can't really comment much on the rest of your questions.

[Lactic Folly]

I'm not in IM, but it seems that the GIM clinics here see a lot of preoperative consults as their bread-and-butter. Academic GIM physicians, not being bound by a subspecialty, can often be involved in broader types of research such as patient safety, quality improvement, medical education, health services policy, and epidemiology.

[cheech10]

In large urban centres, the GIM scope of practice is hard to define given the large number of subspecialists. Perioperative medicine, ER consults, ward medicine, and outpatient consults for poorly defined medical conditions make up much of the work. In smaller centres with less subspecialty support, they will more commonly practice the full spectrum of internal medicine.

 

For ICU work, most large urban centres don't have enough jobs for fellowship trained ICU docs, so most of the GIM docs that work in those ICUs are older and were grandfathered in. In smaller centres, there is the possibility of doing some ICU work.