Internal Medicine Employment Opportunities

An internal medicine physician must complete four years of medical school, and then a three year residency in general internal medicine. This allows one to apply to sit for board certification in internal medicine, which is required by some employers. The residency training in internal medicine is quite broad, and is constructed to allow an internal medicine physician to be able to treat most medical diseases that a adult may have. While an internal medicine physician is not a specialist per se, it is often said that internal medicine physicians are specialists in the delivery of medical care to adult patients.
If a disease process requires the input of a specialist, such as in the case of an adult patient with a complex cardiac disease, then the internal medicine physician may refer the patient to a cardiologist who may then devise a treatment plan for the patient. However, the overall care of the patient will likely still be directed by the internal medicine physician and may include managing other diseases the patient may have as well as performing annual check-ups. In this way an internal medicine physician is sometimes viewed as the overall "manager" of the health care that a patient receives.
Besides caring for patients in a clinic, internal medicine physicians may work solely in hospitals providing care directly to hospitalized patients. Inside the hospital the internal medicine physician also serves as an overall manager of a patient's care, which includes ordering consultations from specialist physicians as well as overseeing the care of the patient inside the hospital environment. Because internal medicine physician have such a broad scope of knowledge about the care of adult patients, their expertise may be put to use in a variety of non-clinical settings.
An insurance company may hire an internal medicine physician to oversee how patients are treated, and more specifically to determine what tests and procedures and needed and which ones are not. Government roles include those where the perspective of a board certified internal medicine physician is needed, such as determining the appropriateness of clinical trials as well as modifying national recommendations regarding the prevention of certain diseases specific to adults.
Research is another area where internal medicine physicians may find employment. Various research bodies such as private pharmaceutical companies and universities have a need for internal medicine physicians to design study protocols which are ethical to use on human subjects. Internal medicine physicians who are in clinical practice may also devote some of their time towards performing clinical research studies themselves. Such studies may involve comparing a new medication to a placebo and observing for any beneficial or detrimental outcome in the patient.
In academic hospital centers there is currently a need for internal medicine physician to fill the role of physician educators to teach internal medicine residents, as well as to serve as physician administrators which may include serving as a head of a department or division within a hospital.