Opinion

New board certifications beg question: What's an IM physician qualified to do?

LETTER — Posted Feb. 26, 2007

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Regarding "Boards sponsor certification in end-of-life care" (Article, Jan. 22): While I was reading this article I became a bit confused. Maybe it is because I am getting old, or maybe the subject really is confusing.

I have been practicing general internal medicine in a rural setting for 28 years. Somewhere around 15 years ago, a certificate examination in geriatrics became available. I took it in 1992. Then, sleep medicine, hypertension, intensive care, which I skipped. Now palliative care.

If you talk to my kids, naïveté has always been one of my problems. Am I to assume that my IM boards do not qualify me to care for dying patients? Or, for that matter, the aged, the hypertensive or the ill?

Peter T. Smyth, MD, Glencoe, Minn.

Note: This item originally appeared at http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2007/02/26/edlt0226.htm.

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