Thread: Internal Medicine vs. Family Medicine

With the exception of a few fellowship options, Family medicine pretty much guarantees an outpatient practice involving mainly non-urgent medical issues with lots of preventative health maintenance.

Internal Medicine on the other hand leads to a large amount of subspecialty options- many of which are procedure and inpatient heavy: gastroenterology, cardiology, critical care, immunology, endocrinology, nephrology, hematology-oncology etc

Big difference.

You can't look at the match list like that. Reasons for someone picking one over the other is an individual reason. Some who choose IM do not want to do peds. Other want to work in a hospit and others want to do fellowship. For FM people may choose it because they want to treat all ages, loves peds, wants outpatient only, wants to do OB, etc. there is not a single answer to your question. FM are doing hospitalist now. If you are between the two, you need to ask yourself what you want to do after residency. Don't pick something just because of compensation. There are places in this country that family medicine physicians are compensated very well.

Some family med docs do ER at small rural ER as well.

Thanks axiom and crispy. I am not worried about compensation. It's better to pick what you have a passion for and then the money will follow.

At this point I am actually very interested in FM. I was just wondering if there were any external factors pushing SGU grads into Internal Medicine and away from Family Medicine. It seems that there is a stigma against FM in medical schools in years 1 & 2, so maybe it's just lack of interest?

Dr Crispy, if you are an SGU graduate completing your FM residency, how do you currently feel about the state of family practice in the U.S.?
One of the reasons I am attracted to it is that you can find a job almost anywhere. Would you say that's true?

I realize these questions are probably a little premature considering I haven't even entered clerkship, but no harm in asking, right?

Yes as a family medicine doc there are plenty of jobs out there. I have received too many offers from all over the country.

When selecting a medical speciality to pursue, all students face the problem of a choice: family medicine or internal medicine? These two differ slightly, in fact. If the first one deals with patients of all ages (one doctor can serve an entire family at his office), the second has to do with the adults only. The program to which you will be accepted depends on your skill set, experience and motivation to help people. It's up to you which speciality to choose, a family doctor or an internal medicine physician.

Thanks for sharing this information with us.