The division of Chest Medicine was established in September 1980 while Kaohsiung Veterans general Hospital was inaugurated. Currently, there are six full-time attending physicians (one director included), two part-time attending physicians, two assigned assistant professors and six of senior fellows and chief residents, two technicians and one full-time nurse practitioner.

In order to diagnose and treat chest diseases quickly, the department has the staffs and equipments for complete pulmonary function test (PFT), physical examinations of sleeping medicine, cardiopulmonary exercise testing, bronchoscopy, chest sonography, and respiratory allergens testing. There are also chest wards (W63), Respiratory Intensive Care Unit (RICU), Respiratory Care Center (RCC)，isolation wards for pulmonary tuberculosis and so on. We also provide perfect equipment and environment for medical treatment and instruction. The average number of inpatients per month is about 200 to 250. As for outpatient services, we provide the services in the morning from Monday to Friday and the number of patients per month is about 2500 to 3000.

As for instruction, by the activities of morning meeting, journal meeting, researching meeting, discharge/ mortality conference and visiting staff round, we direct resident doctors/ interns how to analyze patients’ conditions, interpret thoracic images and follow-up diseases through discussion to reach the purpose of teaching by learning. What’s more, we obtained benefits by exchanging experiences in joint conferences such as interdisciplinary lung diseases, lung cancer, and inter-hospital lung diseases in southern Taiwan. As for research, we emphasize on researches about chronic inflammation of airway disease and gene expression of pulmonary tumor.