Departments of internal medicine are dedicated to the tripartite mission of educating the next generation of physicians and other health care professionals, conducting groundbreaking research, and providing excellent clinical care. Academic internal medicine is the most dominant group of physicians contributing to these missions within US medical schools and teaching hospitals.
With approximately 66,000 faculty and staff, departments of internal medicine:
- Represent 24 percent of fulltime faculty.
- Teach the most residents and fellows (nearly 29,800 or 30 percent of all physicians-in-training).
- Have the greatest responsibility for teaching medical students
- Conduct the most research of any set of departments sponsored by the National Institutes of Health ($2.07 billion or 27.5 percent of all extramural awards)
- Conduct the most research sponsored by the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical device industries.
- Provide the most clinical care in the nation’s teaching hospitals.
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