Infectious Diseases, Prevention and Control

Internal Medicine for Infectious Diseases

Internal medicine practitioners, often known as general internal medicine specialists or general medicine physicians in Commonwealth nations, are educated to address complicated or multisystem illness situations that single-organ disease practitioners may not be equipped to handle. They may be requested to deal with undifferentiated presentations that fall beyond of a single-organ specialty's scope of practice, such as dyspnea, exhaustion, weight loss, chest discomfort, disorientation, or a change in consciousness. They can treat significant acute illnesses that impact many organ systems in a single patient at the same time, as well as multiple chronic diseases or "comorbidities" that a single patient may have.

Internal medicine in general Practitioners does not inherently have less competence than single-organ experts; rather, they are educated for a specialized role in caring for patients who have many disorders at the same time or who have complicated comorbidities.