
specialties in "over-specialties" of increasingly narrow perimeter, which is the result of
medical and technical progress and essential to the care of some patients, there is a need for
an increasingly important number of physicians trained in the synthesis as are internists.
Scope
Internal Medicine departments are essential to the proper functioning of the hospital. Unlike
other specialties, Internal Medicine is characterized by its non-selective recruitment of
patients: outside the surgical setting, a patient can be supported in a diagnostic and / or
therapeutic approach of high quality. Typically, between one third and two thirds of patients
hospitalized in Internal Medicine departments have been transferred from the emergency
department of the hospital. The other part of recruitment varies from one department to
another: patients referred by GPs or specialists based in the city, other hospital departments.
The catchment area of internal medicine is variable, which can sometimes extend to the
national territory. A characteristic of internal medicine is the variety of diseases that are
supported. Particular valence is the management of patients referred by colleagues for poorly
defined symptoms such as unexplained persistent fever, poor general condition, an
inflammatory syndrome, and diseases affecting more than one organ. These patients are often
sent via the internal medicine outpatient clinic where hospitalization is scheduled to perform
with the technical platform of the hospital a number of additional tests over a short time
period.
Internists play an important role in student education, especially regarding semiology, the
patient's overall care and treatment.
Specialties
Besides the care of patients suffering from multiple conditions or diseases involving several
organs, a number of internal medicine specialists emphasize the practice of another specialty,
because of the specific skills of the manager or one of his assistants. The most common are
infectious diseases, diabetology, rheumatology, oncology, vascular medicine. This particular
orientation concerns a rule of activities that are not performed elsewhere in the hospital. It can
be declared in the official name of the service (internal medicine at orientation “X”).
Some internal medicine departments have a predominantly planned activity devoted to the
care of patients with rare systemic autoimmune diseases: it concerns today in Ile-de-France a
small number of University hospital departments over a total of 48 departments hosting
internal medicine residents. This does not prevent other internal medicine departments to care
at patients with this type of conditions. The recruitment of patients in internal medicine
departments comes from three main sources:
- The downstream medical emergencies, including patients with multiple pathologies
- The orphan (rare systemic autoimmune diseases) complex pathology and the difficult
diagnosis of patients referred for second or tertiary advice
- One or more specialties that are not practiced in the hospital.
The relative weight of all three components and, more often, their various combinations
define the variable dose range of what today at the hospital claiming the name of Internal
Medicine. A base of activity common to almost all the internal medicine is the care of patients
suffering from multiple conditions or diseases involving several organs from the emergency
department or from the outpatient clinics.
Model training
The model of internal medicine resident (DES) is simple: in the spirit of the residency and
specialty, the resident must follow a five year training so ten semesters with only three
obligations:
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