Internal medicine specialty

Internal medicine specialty[edit]

Main article: Internal medicine

Internal medicine is the medical specialty dealing with the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of adult diseases.^[27] According to some sources, an emphasis on internal structures is implied.^[28] In North America, specialists in internal medicine are commonly called "internists". Elsewhere, especially in Commonwealth nations, such specialists are often called physicians.^[29] These terms, internist or physician (in the narrow sense, common outside North America), generally exclude practitioners of gynecology and obstetrics, pathology, psychiatry, and especially surgery and its subspecialities.

Because their patients are often seriously ill or require complex investigations, internists do much of their work in hospitals. Formerly, many internists were not subspecialized; such general physicians would see any complex nonsurgical problem; this style of practice has become much less common. In modern urban practice, most internists are subspecialists: that is, they generally limit their medical practice to problems of one organ system or to one particular area of medical knowledge. For example, gastroenterologists and nephrologists specialize respectively in diseases of the gut and the kidneys.^[30]

In the Commonwealth of Nations and some other countries, specialist pediatricians and geriatricians are also described as specialist physicians (or internists) who have subspecialized by age of patient rather than by organ system. Elsewhere, especially in North America, general pediatrics is often a form of primary care.

There are many subspecialities (or subdisciplines) of internal medicine:

• Angiology/Vascular Medicine
• Bariatrics
• Cardiology
• Critical care medicine
• Endocrinology
• Gastroenterology
• Geriatrics
• Hematology
• Hepatology
• Infectious disease
• Nephrology
• Neurology
• Oncology
• Pediatrics
• Pulmonology/Pneumology/Respirology/chest medicine
• Rheumatology
• Sports Medicine

Training in internal medicine (as opposed to surgical training), varies considerably across the world: see the articles on medical education and physician for more details. In North America, it requires at least three years of residency training after medical school, which can then be followed by a one- to three-year fellowship in the subspecialties listed above. In general, resident work hours in medicine are less than those in surgery, averaging about 60 hours per week in the US. This difference does not apply in the UK where all doctors are now required by law to work less than 48 hours per week on average.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "1TopReadys1" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to 1topreadys1+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/1topreadys1/CAEXU47UBu4b4dvtu%3DdyCrjDOQLkLCY4NnerpRMeP9-q_qCuC%3DA%40mail.gmail.com.