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Concept
Internal medicine
Summary
Internal medicine, also known as general internal medicine in Commonwealth nations, is a medical specialty for medical doctors focused on the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of internal diseases. Medical practitioners of internal medicine are referred to as internists, or physicians in Commonwealth nations. Internists possess specialized skills in managing patients with undifferentiated or multi-system disease processes. They provide care to both hospitalized (inpatient) and ambulatory (outpatient) patients and often contribute significantly to teaching and research. Internists are qualified physicians who have undergone postgraduate training in internal medicine, and should not be confused with "interns”, a term commonly used for a medical doctor who has obtained a medical degree but does not yet have a license to practice medicine unsupervised.
In the United States and Commonwealth nations, there is often confusion between internal medicine and family medicine, with people mistakenly considering them equivalent.
Internists primarily work in hospitals, as their patients are frequently seriously ill or require extensive medical tests. Internists often have subspecialty interests in diseases affecting particular organs or organ systems. The certification process and available subspecialties may vary across different countries.
Additionally, internal medicine is recognized as a specialty within clinical pharmacy and veterinary medicine.
The term internal medicine in English has its etymology in the 19th-century German term Innere Medizin. Originally, internal medicine focused on determining the underlying "internal" or pathological causes of symptoms and syndromes through a combination of medical tests and bedside clinical examination of patients. This approach differed from earlier generations of physicians, such as the 17th-century English physician Thomas Sydenham, known as the father of English medicine or "the English Hippocrates.
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