I am a medical student.Does anyone know if there residencies as generalists? where are they?

Question

A faculty members wife asked what I and another student were going to do after finishing our basic sciences. She said something like gee know one wants to be a generalist? I haven't heard of this in recent years. Does this residency still exist? Which states have it? Michigan?

I really am grateful for the replies I am getting here. Interesting that some say they are trying to "attract" doctors to primary care and I recently received a message from someone who says they are still competitive. Interesting.
Anesthesiology sounds good but I'm afraid it would put me to sleep..haha. Just a joke..I'm sure it is facinating really. I just took an online quiz which recommended hemotology for me. What a surprise as I never considered it before but it does sound facinating.

Answer 1

It has been hard to attract medical students into primary care fields for many years because they don't pay well relative to other specialties.

In old terminology, a "generalist" refered to someone who completed an internal medicine residency, and went directly into practice without doing a fellowship. Most doctors now would consider them incompletely trained. A better way of doing the same thing would be Family Medicine where 3 years of post-graduate work is considered adequate.

Aloha

Answer 2

I'll bet she's old. Once upon a time, doctors didn't have to do much in the way of residencies. Now we have Internal Medicine and Family Practice - both of these specialties would be "generalists". I guess it's an antiquated term.

Now we say "Primary Care"

Good luck with Med School! (Consider anesthesia - it's a lot of fun)

Answer 3

You can do a one year rotating internship, which is general in it's approach. If you want to be a generalist, you would want to do a family medicine residency. Few family practitioners do surgery now though, but if you have in mind getting a good all round experience, to perhaps return to a third world country to practice, you would be very well served with family practice, and let them know you want extra surgical experience.