Most infectious diseases work occurs within a hospital with daily workload encompassing review and assessment of patients with infections or presumed infectious causes for their presentation. There is great variety in presentations, including community and hospital acquired infections and infections involving most systems of the body.
A large proportion of this work is consultative with a smaller proportion of patients managed under the care of an infectious diseases team.
A core component of infectious diseases is the diagnostic elements of determining the aetiology of presentations. Management of infections requires expert understanding of antimicrobials including their indication and adverse events.
Outpatient work encompasses general infectious diseases, HIV and viral hepatitis clinics. Management of ambulatory patients on intravenous antibiotic therapy at home (reviewed in clinic) is also a core component of most infectious diseases service.
Involvement in antimicrobial stewardship practices and policies is a core component of work in all hospitals. Antimicrobial stewardship reviews involve notes reviews of patients on antimicrobials. Development of guidelines and policies for antimicrobial use is also a key component of antimicrobial stewardship.
Work at tertiary sites also involves provision of phone advice to referring centres and general practitioners.
As an infectious diseases physician, you need to be able to:
Most roles are Monday to Friday during business hours but with on-call obligations. Most infectious diseases physicians work in metropolitan hospitals but there is scope to work rurally. This specialty is entirely non-procedural.
You need to complete basic physician training first and then it is a competitive application process to enter advanced training in infectious diseases.
Current training requirements include two years of core infectious diseases, six months of microbiology training (or module work with six months non-core ID training) and a further six months non-core. In total, you need to complete three years of clinical training.
Infectious diseases training also lends itself well to dual training with other specialties including clinical microbiology, public health medicine, general medicine and sexual health.
Infectious diseases as a specialty is relatively young so the consultant workforce remains young currently which may limit opportunities in the government sector in the coming decades.
Being a ‘young’ specialty, however, does mean that career prospects are increasing in the private sector and outer metropolitan regions with likely further demand in rural areas in the coming years.
