Akademik

n.

A surgeon who works exclusively in a hospital. [Shortening of surgical hospitalist.]

He's on call 24 hours day, ready to perform an appendectomy, remove a gall bladder, or do a surgery another doctor can't get to. It's just the middle of his two-week shift, and he's already logged 168 hours.

Welcome to the world of the "surgicalist."

"Love it. Absolutely love it," says Dr. Richard Fogle. "I was in private practice, and it would be fine with me if I never went in an office again."

Fogle embodies a concept so new that the word "surgicalist" is virtually unknown in Triangle health-care circles. It's part of the "hospitalist" movement that began in the 1990s, in which health-care professionals care only for hospitalized patients rather than operate an office and then "make rounds" at hospitals.

Surgicalists, very simply, are hospitalists who perform surgery.

—Fred Horlbeck, "New breed of surgeons declares, 'Have scalpel, will travel'," Triangle Business Journal, December 4, 2006

Thomas Memorial Hospital in South Charleston extended the hospitalist model to surgeons two years ago when surgeons became scarce at Thomas, said hospital vice president Bob Gray.

"We were within one surgeon of our call system falling apart," Gray said.

Thomas dubbed the specialty "surgicalists."

—Morgan Kelly, "We're here'," Charleston Gazette, July 31, 2006

It's not a schedule most workers — much less doctors — would chose: 168 hours on, 168 hours off.

But for the two new newest surgeons at Samaritan Hospital, their weeklong schedule means freedom: from paperwork, from malpractice worries and from the hassles of running their own office.

The two are being hired as surgicalists, a new term coined from the more common title surgical hospitalist. Both mean the same thing: doctors hired by hospitals to treat patients full time, replacing local physicians who work at the hospital on an "on-call" basis.

—Alan Wechsler, "These doctors will work 24/7," The Times Union, October 27, 2005