LEGACIES

‘You are what kind of doctor?’

Remembering hospital medicine’s early years

May 11, 2018 | The Hospitalist

That transformed with time.

Like most hospitalists, my ticket in began after some sleuthing and calls to Win Whitcomb, MD, and John Nelson, MD – still trusted friends today. They will make their marks in future columns, but as I am the inaugural contributor, let me be the first to state they both had a sixth sense steering our group of disciples. They became the obvious chiefs, along with Bob Wachter, MD, and took the lead in articulating what we aspired to be. Sounds saccharine now, but it did not then.

This is an image of the earliest incarnation of The Hospitalist. The NAIP, or National Association of Inpatient Physicians, was the precursor to SHM.

Without support, we arranged summits, assembled work groups, passed the hat for loose change, fashioned a newsletter (see accompanying photo), and formed a countrywide network. Our efforts predated the Internet by several years, so it was mail, faxes, pagers, and answering machines only. The hours we would have spared ourselves if we had Doodle, Web Connect, and Skype.

But lucky for us, hospital medicine took off. Our wise choices laid the groundwork for what is now a discipline in repose. “Hospitalist” no longer sounds like a neologism, and the term entered Merriam-Webster to seal our fate.