Casebook of a Community Internist

Experience begets wisdom and wisdom informs change."Patients are the best teachers," he told a friend, shortly before moving west. The choice of a specialist career in community internal medicine came as a surprise to his colleagues. Leaving the big city hospital would mean less access to clinical resources, educational rounds, house staff, and practice support. In short, less "stuff ." Academia might have offered more. But Dr. Baillie moved to Mission, BC, not because he wanted less. He wanted to give rural Canadians more - the benefit of his extensive training - in their home town. Most of his time in Mission, BC, was in solo practice, working as internist and intensivist. Given how much hands-on work he had to do, he says, "It was like an extended fellowship." He saw the full spectrum of acute hospital medicine, on the ward, in the ER, and in the ICU. On-call was heavy - he figures he learned thirty years of medicine in fifteen. When the hospital downsized dramatically in 2002, he m