What Is A Infectious Disease Doctor
In order to become an Infectious disease doctor, you first must complete medical school. After that, then you need to complete an internal Medicine residency. So internal medicine residency is three years so there's another three-year training in infectious diseases. So this means there is 10 years of education that must be completed after getting a regular BA or BS degree in College, as well as passing board certification to become a practicing Infectious disease doctor.
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Infectious Disease Doctors are also known by the following terms:
Infectious disease specialist
ID Doctor
ID Specialist
Although the term is not used much in the United States, the study of infectious disease is called Infectiology
The main area of expertise for Infectious disease doctors is to treat the following broad types of conditions:
Infections of the blood
Infections of the bones
Infections in a prosthesis
Diseases caused by a bacteria
Diseases and infections cause by a fungi
Diseases and infections caused by a parasite
Diseases and infections caused by a virus such as Covid-19, HIV and Hepatitis
Infections that are resistant to standard therapy and antibiotics
Recently we were able to interview an Infectious Disease Doctor who discussed his role in medicine
So I take care of patients who have infections, but also I'm involved in our disaster preparedness response to things such as such as Ebola. We did not have any cases here, but certainly we needed to be prepared to take care of a patient Wow, and so I have a very rich career already so far involving a lot of different aspects, including care of patients, medical education with with our residents and Those students, as well as our fellows and then also disaster, preparedness and disaster response, so that's most of what I do and it's certainly a full-time job.
It's fun! I enjoy that's really good, okay, so just to break it all down, because I know I didn't know all of this when I was pre-med, so you did four years of undergrad four years of medical school, three years of internal medicine, residency, we're trained to just be A general physician, general adult doctor, adult doctor and then three more years of infectious disease fellowship that's right, okay and then two more years fellowship as well.
That's a lot of training, but it's been very valuable, been enjoy. I have enjoyed it the entire way. That's so great, so what exactly do you think made you make the decision to do ID? No, I know you said you liked the bugs and everything, but what about the career was it for you? So a lot of this for me and infectious diseases comes to once the most impact we could possibly have in global health. So, even though we'll put you 10,000 stents in people's coronary arteries to keep them alive, the most impact we have had in medicine is through sanitation and vaccination right and and for example, before the year 2000, 600,000 children would die each year across the world from Measles, and just by increasing the amount of vaccinations across the world, the bad number is down to 150,000 was still a lot.
But that's that's the kind of impact that you can have in when you're talking about infectious diseases, and so it's beyond just the individual patient. But you can also have a very global look at how to improve health, but then you look at the individual so being involved in the care of patients with HIV, which previous previously was a death sentence. If you will, and in some parts of the world that don't have access to some of modern medicines, it's still very fatal disease, but in the United States and people who have access to American medical, the american medical system sort of advanced medical care.
HIV Is Not A Death Sentence Thanks To Modern Treatment
HIV is now a chronic disease, meaning that people who are diagnosed with HIV can take one pill once a day live a normal life, and that is, if I had a time machine went back to 1986 and told people that there's no way. They would believe me. But we take people who come into the office, thinking they're about to die and have them, leaving realizing that they're going to have a very normal and rewarding life, and so those are the kinds of things you can do in infectious diseases.
One of my subspecialty areas within infectious disease is the care of patients with cancer, and so some of these cancers are potentially curable lymphoma leukemia some of these blood cancers, especially where, after they get through chemotherapy their white blood cells, are down there. They can get infected with the kinds of environmental molds that you would normally breathe in and I just do fine with but though can kill those.
And so, if I'm able to get them through that dangerous period, they can potentially live a long normal life, and so is that it's really exciting for me to be involved in their care. But it really takes a lot of subspecialty. Expertise takes a lot of training to do that, so I I like it from a patient care point of view, but also it really takes a lot of time and you have to really learn a lot about these bugs yeah.
Some of the differences between say, cardiology or or pulmonology, or some of these other things where people are learning more and more about the heart or and more about the lungs. But the lungs and heart themselves are not changing. Okay, which is different than infectious diseases. We're sure we're learning more about the disease that we already know, but they're also new diseases that are constantly emerging yeah.
So you really have to be on your game to really know about what's going on globally, because what you knew 10 years ago certainly has changed. Wow, it sounds so rewarding and just how you said it, how you can impact patients and go from extremely sick to telling them they're going to have a normal life. That's incredible it is. It is one of those careers that is very rewarding because of that we talked about cure of disease for the most part and even with HIV, we're talking about getting it.
So then they basically are live a normal life with normal life expectancy very now, down to one pill once a day, yeah, it's phenomenal and it's a very rewarding career. Do you see mostly patients in the hospital or do you balance, outpatient and inpatient care? How does that work? An ID, so most of my career is within the hospital okay and when we're looking at patients, my two areas, especially infections in patients with critical illness.
So they come to an ICU because of an illness or developed an illness in infections. A lot of the ICU yep, so that's one piece and the other one is infection, so patients with cancer and the vast majority of that is within the hospital. So often these are followed by another doctor infect every time. So in that ICU care they're. All about a critical in the hospital for the human to logic, malignancy, the cancer fees they're, followed by a team of cancer, and they asked for my input on how I can help them with a specific type of infection.
Or how do we? You know the person looks infected and I go to a lot of people and so because those areas are largely in the hospital. Most of what I do is in the hospital but different infectious diseases. Doctors do different things. Some people who deal with this, a infections and after orthopedic implants, people have artificial, hips and occasionally say, can get infected, so some of that's in the hospital, but a lot of that is also goes in the outpatient, look at HIV care or tuberculosis.
Similarly, they may have a little bit now hospital, but a lot of that is also in the clinic in the outpatient area, so you really can tailor it based on what your interests are and that's good. So it sounds like you get some continuity with patients. You can see for many years, some just short term. You see them in the hospital when they're super spec and then you have some. I think maybe the majority of your patients are super sick.
You, sick patients. So that's really my my skewed, because I am interested in emerging infections. Thank you sort of things and so that's skewed my career towards a very highly acute patients who usually require hospitalization right, but you don't necessarily have to that. You can kind of tailor it. How you like there's a lot of a lot of options, that's right, see and that's even stuff that I didn't know how much variety there was or how you can kind of change it depending on you know what you prefer.
Yeah some people really like some of the outpatient clinical things and have a very rewarding career, especially in dealing with HIV yeah. That is one of the most rewarding things. Think any physician can do you taking people who thought they were going to die and have them Sepahan their your office excited about life and living a full life. That's amazing! I love that very cool all right well, after that great overview of ID.
Thank you. So much um, I a lot of kind of pick, your brain just about any wisdom you can impart onto us as students. I kind of told you that a lot of you reading today are probably high school students or college students interested in medicine and you've had a very successful path. What kinds of things do you wish you knew or what kinds of things do you want to? Tell kind of the budding physicians yeah when you start getting into college and those very interested in getting into Medical School, it can be a daunting thought yeah.
You have to maintain this just level of excellence if you will, through undergraduate, to get into Medical School. If I can, I don't know if I can do this for four years, and so you don't have to think about it. That way, your goal should be is to do really really well get a four, oh, whatever your first semester, because the the difficulty with ecology is adjusting your time schedule in your priorities to balance life as well as school, and if you can make it a point To get a stay 400 or do the absolute best, you can your first semester, then you will have built up the strategies on how to continue that success for the rest of the time.
So you don't have to think about it in four years means I have to think about doing really. Well your first semester, because once you do that, you'll have figured out what you have to do, what the priorities have to be. So you can have a good life, because college is fun but also do well and get into medical school. So don't think about the port here, just think about your first semester. Okay, that's really good advice and same thing with medical solutions.
They would first that's your first year yeah, that's the next transition getting starting medical school. That's can be daunting, there's a lot. You have to learn and suddenly you're. Your peers are also very, very smart. How do you do as well as they are, and how do you work with them with your other students? It would be very collaborative to help everybody else out yourself and everybody else, and so, if you figure out during your first first block first or whatever it's going to be how to succeed in medical school, then the rest of its going to follow.
I think of it as a like a soccer game and that if you score a couple goals, early really you're going to be unbeatable, whereas you go down a couple goals too early, it's going to be really hard to come back. Sure, okay, never thought about it! That way, well, I read a lot of soccer: okay, good, that makes sense all right and then um Nate. What about making the transition from medical school to residency? How? How do you succeed in that kind of area yeah? That is all so.
These are all daunting transition. Yes, exactly this is suddenly you've gone through prepping, a playing doctors, you Lily in medical school, suddenly people depending on you through life and death decisions, and the good thing is that you really are never alone in a training program. There's always somebody you can talk to and the idea of a residency training program is not to have you be a warm body to fill this role to do this work, but the residency program should be there to turn you to take great medical students and turn Them into outstanding physicians, educators and researchers, and they should have the structure in place to do just that.
Okay, that's really good, okay, so you've kind of told us all about infectious disease, how to kind of succeed in college and in medical school making transition to residency. Another thing I was going to ask you: I get so many emails from you guys and many people ask. How do you go about choosing a specialty and you told us what you love about infectious disease? How would you advise someone what types of things should they think about when deciding what kind of doctor they want to be yeah, I got ta tell you it.
It hit me in medical school. What I was going to do my fourth year during my first and second year - maybe because I thought - was going to be an emergency room doctor, okay and other of my friends actually went to that. That's fine, but I during my fourth year I really fell in love with infectious disease just sort of hidden, and I was clearly this is. This is the way the way I'm going to go.
Something else was mentorship in that during medical school. I was profoundly actually the president of our graduate professional student body and I was working very closely with the head of the faculty Council of the the University and he happened to be in infectious diseases done, and I saw that his career was something that I could See myself doing and he spoke very passionately about the work he did and it's hard to ignore that and then I was working with the guys so much, and so I saw what he saw and then just sort of built, my interest yeah.
I can't say it will usually hit you at least it did from me. So don't worry about it. If you don't know, first and second year, keep it open you're not supposed to know okay, I I thought I do. I was wrong. Yep yeah you're not supposed to know you should really have an open mind, have an idea of what you're looking for the type of things, whether you you prefer continuity of care versus sort of acute management of specific things, but no matter what you're doing you probably Find subject matter that interests you and tailor that to the type of medicine you like you're right, there's a lot more freedom within each specialty, then maybe we traditionally think of - and you can tailor it like.
You have to do any exactly what you're passionate about absolutely. It's really great okay, anything else you can think of no, not too much. I think infectious disease is often not especially people think about that. I think everyone's heard of a cardiologist or a surgeon, but in in the world you need more infectious diseases. Doctors, if you want to reduce the actual mortality across the planet and still the vast majority of deaths across the world and related to infectious diseases that can often be stamped out just through good sanitation vaccinations.
So it was a very rewarding career that most of you probably have never heard of, but absolutely the best decision I've ever made well.
