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Evolution of the Infectious Diseases Practitioner

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 June 2016

F. Richard Ervin
F. Richard Ervin*
Affiliation:
McLeod Regional Medical Center, Florence, South Carolina
*
McLeod Regional Medical Center, 555 E. Cheves Street, Florence, SC 29501
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Extract

In 1986, I wrote of the imminent decline in professional opportunities for the infectious diseases clinician because of unique problems with clinical practice in this specialty.' Although others have disagreed with my prophecy, none were able to refute my basic contention that it soon will be almost impossible for most new physicians with specialty training in infectious diseases to become self-supporting from a purely clinical practice. If a clinician is “an expert clinical [pertaining to or founded on actual observation and treatment of patients] physician and teacher,” then many of us are no longer only clinicians in the strictest sense of the word. The bell does toll for the pure clinician in this field of medicine, and the time of the easy establishment of a clinical practice is coming to a close. Future viability depends on developing beyond the role of clinician and becoming an “infectious diseases practitioner.”

Type
Special Sections
Information
Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology , Volume 9 , Issue 11 , November 1988 , pp. 508 - 509
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America 1988

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