The academic psychiatric hospitalist: a model for treatment and training in the academic inpatient setting

Recent years have seen the expanding presence of hospitalists, most prominently in internal medicine, but also in other areas such as neurology, pediatrics, and psychiatry. In contrast to a burgeoning literature on general medicine hospitalists, very little has been written about the role of psychiatric hospitalists-psychiatrists who work exclusively in the hospital setting-and the advantages of this model in the inpatient setting. The authors trace the history of hospitalists in psychiatry and argue that this model can fit well with the clinical and teaching mission of the modern academic psychiatry inpatient program. High quality care of acutely ill psychiatric inpatients involves a body of knowledge and a set of core competencies that may be best served by psychiatric hospitalists.