Physicians in the Division of General Medicine play a leading role in educating the internists of tomorrow as well as providing comprehensive medical care for adults today. Education is the critical focus for our faculty, whether they are supervising medical students and residents in the patient clinics, or using their teaching skills to improve patient care. As educators, we concentrate on the expert medical training of a new generation of doctors. As researchers, we conduct health-services research to understand how doctors and patients communicate and make that interaction more effective. As health-care providers, we recognize that our patients are individuals from diverse cultures and backgrounds. Our clinicians and researchers are committed to studying and overcoming the barriers to providing good medical care through teaching and research, and to applying that new knowledge to enhance care delivery.

The division's accomplished geriatric clinician-educators are training future physicians to care for the 76 million "baby boomers" who will soon reach retirement age. These doctors will develop better approaches to treating common geriatric syndromes such as urinary incontinence, Alzheimer-type dementias and balance / gait disorders. Our commitment to geriatric medicine helped create the Internal Medicine Geriatric Clinic, a place that provides special care for older adults whose independence is threatened. Here, physicians have shifted their care emphasis from "disease management" to "people management" - finding strategies to help patients with chronic disease function at maximal capacity.