The Evolving Role of the Internal Medicine Specialist
ACP envisions the role of the Internal Medicine Specialist as a comprehensive provider for the health needs of adults and reaffirms several fundamental characteristics of general internists. Although several of these are features of other generalist disciplines, others distinguish the Internal Medicine Specialist from other physicians who provide comprehensive care to adults. Not every general internist actively partakes in every feature, but potential responsibilities for the evolving role of the Internal Medicine Specialist will include one or more of the following:
1. A primary care physician: the patient's first contact and a provider of comprehensive continuing evidence-based care that involves the development and maintenance of a sustained and trusting patient-physician relationship.
2. A physician who evaluates and manages all aspects of illness-biomedical and psychosocial-in the whole patient.
3. An expert in evidence-based disease prevention and management, early detection of disease, and health promotion.
4. The patient's guide and advocate in a complex health care environment.
5. An expert diagnostician who treats and manages chronically ill patients with one or multiple complex and interactive illnesses.
6. A consultant when patients have difficult, undifferentiated problems or when the general internist has special expertise to apply to their problems.
7. A resource manager and administrator of health care who is familiar with the science of clinical epidemiology and evidence-based medicine and can bring a thoughtful, cost-effective practice style to evaluation and management.
8. A clinical information manager who can take full advantage of health information technology.
9. A generalist in outlook and team leader in the healthcare environment who also possesses special skills that respond to the needs of a particular care environment.
10. An administrator, researcher, and educator who expands the medical knowledge base.
11. A leader in the area of quality improvement.
Adopted BoR, July 16, 2005
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