Working life (ID)
This page provides useful information about the roles and responsibilities of specialists in infectious disease, where they work, who they work with and what they feel about their role.
“Although infectious diseases is a small specialty in comparison with other system-based disciplines, it provides the opportunity for a challenging and constantly varied career. Specialists deal with everything from diverse clinical management to intellectually stimulating frontier research into diseases of worldwide importance.” - An infectious disease specialist
Infectious disease specialists work primarily in hospitals. They tend to work in large or specialist hospitals rather than smaller district general hospitals although many infectious diseases are also treated in the community.
How your time is spent
Daily activities include:
- admitting patients with severe infections
- managing severe infection in an intensive therapy unit (ITU) setting
- managing patients with imported infections such as malaria
- caring for immunocompromised patients, including neutropenic (low white-blood-cell count) patients and those with HIV infection/AIDS
- seeing patients in clinics dealing with a wide range of infection related problems including specialty clinics such as hepatitis, HIV, tuberculosis, travel related infection etc
- managing nosocomial infections (infections a patient acquires while in hospital), with knowledge of infection control and appropriate liaison with laboratory services
- providing advice to other consultants in all specialties about care of their patients with infections
- advising on policies relating to control of infections and best use of antibiotics
- advising on prevention of travel related infections
Sometimes patients must be isolated in order to be safely managed and treated.