Medical training: A look at internal medicine

While Dr. Matt Boente MD has already completed his training and has become a bona fide doctor, he remains very much fascinated and nostalgic with what he went through to reach his goals. In fact, he has even started a series of blogs that touches on medical training itself, among other things.

For this blog, Dr. Matt Boente MD explores the many things related to doctors of internal medicine.

Doctors of internal medicine or internists are also general physicians (GPs) for adults. They specialize in disease prevention, diagnoses, treatment, and care of adult patients. The primary skill of these doctors lies in helping patients via a “ Review of symptoms/system disease algorithm in their minds based on what the patient tells the physician.

Internists look up patient histories, execute physical exams, prescribe medicine after diagnosing a patient. However, they do not do the work of surgeons, which is to say they do not do surgery.

However, doctors of internal medicine can opt to train for sub-specialties to narrow their scope of practice to a certain organ system. Some of them elect to do fellowships, which takes around two to four years. Other doors open for internists, Dr. Matt Boente MD adds, lead to areas hepatology, cardiology, endocrinology, hematology/oncology, rheumatology, pulmonology, gastroenterology, nephrology, allergy/immunology, and geriatrics.

On a more interesting note, some internists may also become researchers and scientists like Dr. Matt Boente MD, a surgeon, who played a key role in the cervix and endometrial cancer screening task force of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN), a committee that defined the standards of care for cervix and endometrial cancer screening.

Dr. Matt Boente MD has always been intrigued by the rigorous process it takes to become a doctor. He is also fascinated with other healthcare-related topics like medical economics. To know more about Dr. Boente, click this link.