Adult medicine inpatient experience: a comparison of family practice and internal medicine residency services.

The charts of 1,272 hospitalized adult medicine patients were reviewed to compare the amount of inpatient management experienced by family practice and internal medicine resident services during a 12-month period. In a random sample of 251 patients, the diagnostic categories, age and sex distribution, race, length of hospitalization, and numbers of patients managed by both services were reviewed and analyzed. Family practice residents with an autonomous inpatient medicine service were found to have an adult inpatient experience similar to that of internal medicine residents in the same multispecialty teaching hospital.