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 in adults. 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.
Health care, or healthcare, is the improvement of health via the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, amelioration or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in people. Health care is delivered by health professionals and allied health fields. Medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, midwifery, nursing, optometry, audiology, psychology, occupational therapy, physical therapy, athletic training, and other health professions all constitute health care. The term includes work done in providing primary care, secondary care, and tertiary care, as well as in public health.
Louis Wade Sullivan is an active health policy leader, minority health advocate, author, physician, and educator. He served as the Secretary of the United States Department of Health and Human Services during President George H. W. Bush's Administration and was Founding Dean of the Morehouse School of Medicine.
The Commonwealth Fund is a private U.S. foundation whose stated purpose is to "promote a high-performing health care system that achieves better access, improved quality, and greater efficiency, particularly for society's most vulnerable, including low-income people, the uninsured, and people of color." It is active in a number of areas related to health care and health policy. It is led by Joseph R. Betancourt, M.D., M.P.H.
The American College of Physicians (ACP) is a Philadelphia-based national organization of internists, who specialize in the diagnosis, treatment, and care of adults. With 161,000 members, ACP is the largest medical-specialty organization and second-largest physician group in the United States, after the American Medical Association. Its flagship journal, the Annals of Internal Medicine, is considered one of the five top medical journals in the United States and Britain.
The University of North Texas Health Science Center is a public academic health science center in Fort Worth, Texas. It is part of the University of North Texas System and was founded in 1966 as the Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine, with its first cohort admitted in 1970. UNT Health Science Center consists of six schools with a total enrollment of 2,329 students (2020–21).
Medical education is education related to the practice of being a medical practitioner, including the initial training to become a physician and additional training thereafter.
Joseph J. Fins, M.D., D. Hum. Litt., M.A.C.P., F.R.C.P. is an American physician and medical ethicist. He is chief of the Division of Medical Ethics at New York Presbyterian Hospital and Weill Cornell Medical College, where he serves as The E. William Davis Jr., M.D. Professor of Medical Ethics, and Professor of Medicine, Professor of Public Health, and Professor of Medicine in Psychiatry. Fins is also Director of Medical Ethics and an attending physician at New York Presbyterian Hospital-Weill Cornell Medical Center. Fins is also a member of the adjunct faculty of Rockefeller University and has served as Associate for Medicine at The Hastings Center. He is the Solomon Center Distinguished Scholar in Medicine, Bioethics and the Law and a Visiting Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He was appointed by President Bill Clinton to The White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy and currently serves on The New York State Task Force on Life and the Law by gubernatorial appointment.
The Academy of Medical Sciences is an organisation established in the UK in 1998. It is one of the four UK National Academies, the others being the British Academy, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society.
Western University of Health Sciences (WesternU) is a private medical university in Pomona, California. With an enrollment of 3,724 students (2022–23), WesternU offers more than twenty academic programs in multiple colleges. It also operates an additional campus in Lebanon, Oregon.
The University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) is a public academic health science center in Omaha, Nebraska. Founded in 1869 and chartered as a private medical college in 1881, UNMC became part of the University of Nebraska System in 1902. Rapidly expanding in the early 20th century, the university founded a hospital, dental college, pharmacy college, college of nursing, and college of medicine. It later added colleges of public health and allied health professions. One of Omaha's top employers, UNMC has an annual budget of $841.6 million for 2020 to 2021, and an economic impact of $4.8 billion.
Uwe Ernst Reinhardt was a professor of political economy at Princeton University and held several positions in the healthcare industry. Reinhardt was a prominent scholar in health care economics and a frequent speaker and author on subjects ranging from the war in Iraq to the future of Medicare.
The State University of New York Upstate Medical University is a public medical school in Syracuse, New York. Founded in 1834, Upstate is the 15th oldest medical school in the United States and is the only medical school in Central New York. The university is part of the State University of New York (SUNY) system.
Christine K. Cassel is a leading expert in geriatric medicine, medical ethics and quality of care. She is planning dean of the new Kaiser Permanente School of Medicine. Until March 2016, she was president and CEO of the National Quality Forum. Previously, Cassel served as president and CEO of the American Board of Internal Medicine and the ABIM Foundation.
Health administration, healthcare administration, healthcare management or hospitalmanagement is the field relating to leadership, management, and administration of public health systems, health care systems, hospitals, and hospital networks in all the primary, secondary, and tertiary sectors.
Mark Kuczewski is an American philosopher and bioethicist who has been a key contributor to the New Professionalism movement in medicine and medical education. In general, interest in professionalism has been widespread in medicine probably owing to the increasing regulatory and economic pressures on the practice of medicine. Many physicians have sought to identify the focal meaning of what it is to be a doctor in an effort to revitalize the profession. Kuczewski has been among a group that includes Richard and Sylvia Creuss, John Coulehan, and Matthew Wynia who see medical professionalism as including a commitment to social justice. That is, while professionalism entails such things as etiquette, communication skills, and basic medical ethics, professions are also expected to be leaders in educating the public and in advocating for the health of the public. Such leadership requires an understanding of the factors that lead some patient populations to be underserved and a commitment to bringing about social change to ameliorate these problems. The New Professionalism movement in medicine is a revival of communitarian bioethics that focus on the kinds of people and society we wish to be rather than on particular ethical questions of right and wrong. This focus on the relationship between the professional and the community can have important implications for medical education and professional development. While not eschewing case analysis and problem solving, the emphasis on the development of the person has created a renewed interest in narrative methods and reflection. Kuczewski has been an outspoken critic of efforts in medical education to focus on quantitative measures of professionalism education. He has argued that in an effort to make professionalism education “objective,” many medical educators are equating professionalism with trivial but easily measured behaviors. Kuczewski’s interest in professionalism and social justice has led him to pursue ethical issues in the interactions between medicine and recent immigrant populations. He has brought his work in communitarian and casuistic methods to bear on questions such as medical repatriation, insurance for undocumented immigrants, and the eligibility of DREAMers to become practicing physicians. His scholarship and advocacy was the catalyst for the Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine becoming the first medical school in the United States to explicitly welcome applications from DREAMers with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status. Under Kuczewski’s direction, the Neiswanger Institute for Bioethics and Health Policy at Loyola University Chicago has become a leader in educational programming to promote the relationship between medical professionalism and social justice. The Neiswanger Institute has contributed elements to the Stritch curriculum that explore the relationship between the business of medicine and social justice. The Institute also has online master of arts and doctoral programs that incorporating public health and leadership training in order to help health care professionals across the United States to promote service to the underserved. Kuczewski was elected president of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities and served a two-year term from 2009 to 2011. The ASBH is the major professional association in the United States for individuals engaged in bioethics and medical humanities. During his term, the society aggressively began moving toward a process called Quality Attestation that will attest to the credentials and expected competence of clinical ethics consultants.
David Jay Rothman was professor of Social Medicine at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. He also served as the president of the Institute on Medicine as a Profession (IMAP). Rothman's work focused on the social history of American medicine and current health care practices. His research also explored human rights in medicine, including organ trafficking, AIDS, and the ethics of research in developing countries.
The John A. Hartford Foundation is a private United States-based philanthropy whose current mission is to improve the care of older adults. For many years, it made grants for research and education in geriatric medicine, nursing and social work. It now focuses on three priority areas: creating age-friendly health systems, supporting family caregivers and improving serious illness, and end-of-life care.
Katrina Alison Armstrong is an American internist. She is the chief executive officer of the Columbia University Irving Medical Center and Dean of the Faculties of Health Sciences and the Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. Armstrong is the first woman to lead Columbia's medical school and medical center. She was the first woman to hold the position of Physician-in-Chief at Massachusetts General Hospital and was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2013 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2020.
Health systems science (HSS) is a foundational platform and framework for the study and understanding of how care is delivered, how health professionals work together to deliver that care, and how the health system can improve patient care and health care delivery. It is one of the three pillars of medical education along with the basic and clinical sciences. HSS includes the following core foundational domains: health care structure and process; health system improvement; value in health care; population, public, and social determinants of health; clinical informatics and health technology; and health care policy and economics. It also includes four functional domains: ethics and legal; change agency, management, and advocacy; teaming; and leadership. Systems thinking links all of these domains together. Patient, family, and community are at the center of HSS.
