When I use a word . . . Clinical pharmacology—the quintessential generalist specialty

A think tank called Re:State, formerly known as Reform, has recently published a report titled “Hospital of the future. Ending the patient gridlock.” Its most striking recommendation is that, in order to improve the flow of patients through hospitals and back into the community, the government should create a new medical specialty, hospitalism, specifically to deliver clinical generalism for patients with multiple undifferentiated problems, i.e. mainly those with multimorbidity, in both hospital and community settings. Practitioners of hospitalism, to be called hospitalists, would incorporate many of the responsibilities of hospitalists already working in other countries, trained in managing inpatient wards, diagnosing undifferentiated problems, and undertaking leadership and management practices. Here I show that in the UK we already have practitioners who fulfil this description, namely clinical pharmacologists. Thus, to fulfil this recommendation, the NHS should take advantage of the several existing departments of clinical pharmacology around the UK to train new clinical pharmacologists, to act as hospitalists in the terms described in the Re:State think tank’s report, thus improving healthcare in hospitals and the community.