Isaure Hostetter, MD, MPH
Primary Care Physician
ACP Council of Resident/Fellow Members, 2023-2025
1. What is your current professional position?
Primary care physician.
2. Why did you choose internal medicine?
I initially chose internal medicine because it satisfied my curiosity—as a part of daily work, I not only get to look up and learn myriad medical facts, but I also get to hear from patients: what is important to them, what worries them, what they hope to do. As I remain a generalist, it is especially satisfying to be able to interpret all the disparate things happening for my patients and to put it together in a way that makes sense to them.
3. What trends are you seeing in your day-to-day practice (with patients, the health care system, or otherwise)?
On a daily basis I see how the structure of our health care system can support or deny consistent access to care. As I work in a safety net system with patients experiencing housing instability, it becomes more clear by the day how challenging health care today is to negotiate. Because of this, my definition of what it means to be a physician has expanded to include a systems-level view as well as many tips on navigation that I never learned in medical school that directly improve my patients’ access to health care and, through that, a chance at improved health.
4. What do you want to accomplish professionally within the next five years?
As I am relatively recently out of residency, I want to continue to strengthen as a primary care physician. I also hope to stay connected with learners as it is fulfilling to share my passion with others and to learn from their many perspectives as well.
5. Can you share a brief (and anonymous) patient encounter or professional situation that made you proud to be an internal medicine physician?
To patients, I often describe the role of a general internal medicine physician as “air traffic control” given how many moving pieces we field at once. Recently, I have met several patients who are new to our health system who had pressing medical concerns requiring multidisciplinary care. Empowering them to understand what was happening with their health, what the next steps are, and how to liaise directly with the required subspecialty teams to ensure they were not lost to follow-up was satisfying and made me proud to be able to help them.