I’ve often heard of a “medical” floor at a hospital or of “Medical” residents? What is meant exactly by this? I always assumed people were talking about medicine in general, and not a specific specialty or field. Then I was clicking around on the U of MN med school web site and there is a mention of a “medicine” residency (3 yrs). Is this what primary care docs do for a residency? Do you then get board certified in “medicine”? Do most go for further, more specialized training after a medicine residency?
Cheers,
Doug
When people refer to medicine as a particular specialty, they are referring to Internal Medicine, which is best described as general adult medicine (which is like saying that pediatrics is general medicine for children and adolescents).
There are 3 basic primary care residencies: Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, and Family Practice. Family practice tries to combine IM, peds, as well as some OB and G. Surg. The limitation to FP is that there are fewer opportunities for subspecialization. In internal medicine, you can go on to do fellowships in gastroenterology, endocrinology, cardiology (and subsequently interventional cardiology), etc. There are similar subspecializations in pediatrics.
Hope this info was useful.
good cat