The Department of Medicine has experienced tremendous growth over the past several decades, under the leadership of Dr. Samuel Proger, Dr. William Schwartz, Dr. Sheldon Wolff and Dr. Jeffrey Gelfand. In 1998, Dr. Deeb Salem, a nationally recognized cardiologist and the Chief Medical Officer of the hospital was named Physician in Chief of Tufts Medical Center and Tufts University School of Medicine.
Professional Staff
140 full time faculty
72 house officers
28 clinical
142 research fellows
Divisions
Cardiology
Endocrinology
Gastroenterology
General Medicine
Geographic Medicine and Infectious Diseases
Hematology and Oncology
Nephrology
Pulmonary
Rheumatology
Unique Programs
· The Division of Clinical Decision Making, the first of its kind in the country, has been a pioneer in the area of clinical decision analysis.
· The Institute for the Improvement of Medical Care and Health was founded in 1988. Members of the Institute have been some of the leaders in the area of outcomes research. The Institute was recently incorporated into our Division of Clinical Care Research.
· Several members of our faculty are based at the United States Department of Agriculture's Nutrition Research Center on Aging, also located on our campus. Some of those faculty are part of our Division of Clinical Nutrition.
Research
The Department of Medicine has a long history of distinguished research. Current faculty includes many distinguished investigators who have been at the forefront of many of the exciting areas of biomedical research. Areas of great interest include pathogenesis of autoimmune disease, cytokine biology, neuroendocrinology, infectious arthritides, chronic hepatic and renal disease and the etiology and treatment of atherosclerosis. During the past year, the Department had approximately 50 million dollars in extramural grant support. Many of our laboratories are located in the 14 story Tupper Research Institute (approximately 110,000 sq. ft.), a building exclusively occupied by members of the Department. The Department of Medicine has a major commitment to enhance the health of people in developing countries and some of our faculty work overseas.
Inpatient Medical Service
The inpatient medical service consists of approximately 120 beds divided into several subspecialty services:
· General Internal Medicine
· Cardiology
· Gastroenterology
· Nephrology
· Pulmonary
· Infectious Diseases
· Hematology/Oncology
· Leukemia/Bone Marrow Transplantation
The inpatient services also include a medical intensive care unit team. The usual ward team consists of one resident, one intern, one senior medical student, one junior medical student, and a full time attending physician. The subspecialty system and our small team size are unique. Generally, patients are assigned to the subspecialty service appropriate for their illness. More than half of the patients on most services are admitted on that basis. As a result, house officers are taught about various disease entities by staff physicians who are experts in their specialty. We feel that this greatly enhances both patient care and house staff education. Another unique feature of our program is the full time attending physician who is also the physician of record on all hospitalized patients. This means that the house staff only have to interact with one attending for the management decisions on their patients.
The patient population is extraordinary in its cultural and clinical diversity. Our growing General Medical Associates contribute a large base of primary care for the hospital. Our long standing tradition of excellent subspecialty care has resulted in strong referral bases that continue to supply us with an outstanding spectrum of tertiary and quarternary care medicine. For instance, we have a robust electrophysiology service, are members of consortiums for liver and heart transplantations, perform kidney transplantations and have a growing Bone Marrow Transplantation Service. Our house staff have direct contact with all of these patients.
Ambulatory Services
The ambulatory services of the Department of Medicine include a variety of subspecialty and general internal medicine clinics (the General Medical Associates, the Pratt Diagnostic Clinic and a walk-in clinic). In these settings full time faculty provide supervision of house staff. The Department of Medicine and the hospital have a strong commitment to expand the ambulatory services at our institution.
Emergency Department
The Emergency Department is staffed by house officers from medicine, psychiatry, pediatrics and surgery. Approximately 40 adult medical patients are seen each day; patients seen initially in the Emergency Department account for approximately one third of all admissions to the medical service. We have an excellent group of full time emergency medicine physicians which greatly enhances the teaching program in the emergency department setting. Our attending staff provides 24 hours, 7 days a week coverage.