Isn’t all medicine internal? How is a it different from a PCP?
In: Biology
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A PCP or primary care provider is basically like your “main doctor”, who knows your whole picture and might also refer you to other specialists.
A PCP can usually be one of four kinds of specialists:
– Internal Medicine, which specializes in adult care with a focus on managing issues related to “internal organs”. They often practice inside of a hospital.
– Pediatrics, which specializes in the care of children.
– ObGyn – Less commonly used as a pcp, but technically qualifies as one. Focused on women’s reproductive health.
– Family Medicine, who receives broad training and can see all of the above, so named because they can see “the entire family” if desired. Less specialized, but greater audience of care.
Because everyone’s health needs are different, there are different preferences in what specialization you’d like your PCP to have.
A pcp does everything in a primary care setting: patients who are not in emergency go to a pcp to get checked out.
The pcp will then diagnose the disorder and treat it themselves if it is a common easily treated ailment, say bronchitis, hypertension with no other problems etc.
If they cannot accurately diagnose or treat the disorder they will send you in to a physician that is much more trained, but only in a highly specific field.
Say a dermatologist for the skin, or an internal medicine one for internal organs, though outside of the hospital it’s likely gonna be a more specialised form of internal medicine, like nephrology for kidneys or gastroenterologist for stomach/digestive tract stuff.
Internal medicine physicians are much more common inside a hospital.
They pretty much take all the patients in that aren’t surgical cases, neurology cases or psychiatric cases.
So diabetes problems, blood pressure problems liver problems anything wrong with your internal organs that doesn’t require surgery right away is going to internal medicine.
Usually a pcp has extensive internal medicine experience from a hospital first before becoming a pcp, as internal medicine is the most versatile basis for doing GP work, since most reasons you’d see a pcp for would be internal organ related
Internal medicine is an “adult pediatrician”. (That’s how I explained it as a resident). I agree the name is dumb- the only “external” medicine would be dermatology and maybe ophthalmology, but it is what it is.
Internists specialize in adult non-surgical disease in both outpatient clinics (like a pcp) and in the hospital (aka hospitalists). We deal with problems of the heart, kidneys, intestines, liver, lungs, infections, etc… using mostly medicines which differentiates us from surgeons who fix people using some medicines but mostly knives.
Many internists do extra training and become “sub-specialists” like cardiologists or gastroenterologists focusing on a specific organ.
Contrast this with family medicine (who also are often PCPs). Their training is focused on the outpatient world, not as much in the hospital. But they also take care of kids and ob-gyn issues including delivering babies.
The answers so far are wrong. Internal medicine derives it’s name from the word “intern”. Traditionally, doctors that worked the longest hours in the hospital seeing patients from ward to ward were called Internists. As opposed to specialists who only came in to see unique cases and didn’t have to do so much doctor “grunt” work. Over time, the role has evolved into a more formal position that doctors that primarily want to treat patients in what you might call the “general ward”, i.e patients that are sick enough to need hospitalization, but have conditions that are well understood and mostly straightforward to treat, i.e they don’t need a specialist. Such doctors are called Internists and the practice is called Internal medicine.
Has nothing to do with internal vs external organs. Unless you’re a dermatologist, all medicine is internal.
There’s a few questions you’re asking here. The etymology is basically that it comes from German, where the meaning of internal referred more to finding the underlying cause of diseases with an emphasis on using physiology and laboratory data. This originated in the 17th century. Americans studying on Europe later on (esp in the 19th century) brought the term back with them (and the specialty).
Others have addressed the functional difference, but in short an internist still focuses on finding the underlying roots of disease and often deals with cases that have more complicated, (often) multifactorial disease.
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