Choosing an area of practice can be one of the more difficult decisions that future doctors-whether in medical school, working on an undergraduate degree, or just dreaming of a career in medicine-must make. However, if you are interested in patients' day-to-day health, building up long-term doctor-patient relationships, and solving diagnostic medical challenges, you may want to consider becoming a doctor of internal medicine, also known as an internist.

Internists are physicians who have wide-ranging knowledge of complex diseases that affect adults. At least three of their seven or more years of medical school and postgraduate training are dedicated to learning how to prevent, diagnose and treat illness in adults. Internal medicine physicians can treat something as routine as the flu, or provide in-depth care for diseases such as diabetes or heart disease.

Internists can choose to focus their practice on general internal medicine or may take additional subspecialty training, called a fellowship, in one of 14 areas: adolescent medicine, allergy and immunology, cardiology, critical care, endocrinology, gastroenterology, geriatrics, hematology, infectious disease, nephrology, oncology, pulmonology, rheumatology, and sports medicine.

Often, internists care for their patients as primary care doctors for life-from the teen years through old age-in a variety of settings (solo or group practice, hospital or a combination). However, internal medicine training offers a diverse breadth of knowledge that can be used to base a successful career in a variety of fields such as research, medical education, public health, or health care administration.

In terms of both salary and workload, internists are generally in the middle of the field, averaging about 56 hours of patient care activity per week, with a median net income of about $164,000. Like all other specialties, the American Board of Internal Medicine requires physicians to be credentialed every 10 years to ensure up-to-date knowledge of both information and procedures.

To learn more about doctors of internal medicine and how to become an internist, you can visit the American College of Physicians' (ACP) Web site at www.acponline.org. ACP is the nation's largest medical specialty society. Internists are physicians who specialize in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of illness in adults.

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