I am a prospective student for internal medicine and I still haven't...

[nickdean08]

...decided if it's right for me. Any info? I want to know what exactly is expected of internists once starting practice. What activities do they take care of for patients? I know that they treat with medicine, but how much does an internist do things like cut people open? Not for surgery but for things like running tests. I don't know if I'm comfortable with slicing people, but I'm sure I could get over it if it didn't come around too often. What are internal medicine interns expected to do? Do internists take care of patients when they crash under their watch? and What amount of free time would I be expecting to have, and does that amount of time change when going from intern to full out doctor? I know it's kind of a lot of questions, but I don't want to make a decision on my life that is uneducated. Any other info that you might think is helpful will be accepted too. Thanks for any info to come.
By internist. I mean I want to work with internal medicine as a doctor, not a nurse. I also wouldn't want to go into private practice, I would want to stay in a large hospital, preferably mostly working in an ICU.

[Dr. Chase]

Any physician is required to treat when necessary. If someone "crashed on your watch", you would know what to do anyway. Wouldn't you want to do all you could? An internist wouldn't call a code blue and not do anything they could to save someone who "crashed". Yes, internists mostly take care of prescribing, and do less "procedures" than a surgeon, but they are still equipped in cases of emergency.

[jescikka]

Not a 100% sure what you mean by this question. If you mean nursing you may have to do procedures like giving injections. Then there will be dressings etc to do.

If you are working in a pharmacy doing medicine you will proberly have to fill pricriptions and things.

Any medical profession is a great job to go into. Its highly trained and they have a choose of where they work as people are always looking for trained staff and you could even choose your own country as most are looking to recruite medical staff.

Hope thats of some help...