History of Department of Internal Medicine
Introduction to Department of Internal Medicine
A. The Organization
Department of internal medicine was established since October 1990. In its early days, divisions included Gastroenterology, Cardiology, Chest medicine, Endocrine and Metabolism Medicine, Nephrology, Infectious Diseases, Hematology (now known as Division of Hematology and Oncology), Division of Allergy, Immunology and Rheumatology, Neurology, Critical Care, Respiratory Treatment and Psychiatry. In 1993, the hospital was promoted to Medical Center and claimed independence. The Psychiatry division also became independent from the medical department. There are currently 332 medical beds. In addition to Intensive Care Unit (ICU), there were also Respiratory ICU and an isolated Infectious Disease medical ward. The General medicine division was established since 2003 on mission-oriented purpose.
B. Staffs
1. Department Director: Dr. Hung-Ting Chiang served as the first chairman of the Department of Internal Medicine in 1990. After Dr. Chiang was commissioned as the hospital vice superintendent in 1997, he was succeeded by Dr. Kwok-Hung Lai. Dr. Lai provided leadership to the department until 2003 when Dr. Hsiao-Min Chung became Chairman. During his term, Dr. Chung expanded the department’s training program with the introduction of the Sections of Geriatric Medicine and General Medicine. Dr. Chung served the department until 2010 and was succeeded by Dr. Chun-Peng Liu who previously served as the Chief of the Cardiology Section.
2. Current Division Directors:
General Medicine: Chih-Cheng Lu (2007 ~ Current)
Gastroenterology: Ping-I Hsu (2007 ~ Current)
Cardiology: Chuen-Wang Chiou (2010~ Current)
Infectious Diseases: Yao-Shen Chen (2006 ~ Current)
Thoracic (Chest) medicine: Ruay-Sheng Lai (2005~ Current)
Respiratory/ (Pulmonary) Treatment: Hong-Yang Tao (2000 ~ Current)
Neurology: Yuk-Keung Lo (1995 ~ Current)
Nephrology: Hua-Chang Fang (2010 ~ Current)
Endocrine and Metabolism: Hing-Chung Lin (2007~ Current)
Allergy, Immunology and Rheumatology: Jui-Cheng Tseng (2007 ~ Current)
Hematology and Oncology: Ming-Shen Yu (2006 ~ Current)
Critical Care/ Intensive Care: Shao-Lin Lin (2010 ~ Current)
3. Specialties:
There are currently 63 faculty physicians in the Department of internal medicine, some full-time and some part-time positions. There are 3 Doctors in General Medicine, 10 in Gastroenterology, 12 in Cardiology, 4 in Infectious Diseases, 7 in Chest medicine, 3 in Respiratory Treatment, 6 in Neurology, 6 in Nephrology, 4 in Metabolism Medicine, 3 in Allergy, Immunology and Rheumatology, 1 in Hematology and Oncology, and 4 in Critical Care/ Intensive Care.4. Division's chief resident physicians (chief residents):
Selected by the Director, totally six Doctors with four years of resident doctor experience will be chosen, three doctors for 6 months each term. Their duties include medical administration, education, training, and medical beds assignment.5. Resident Doctors:
Currently 49 physicians, who were graduated from medical schools around the country.C. Medical Practice:
Two main duties of the medical Department include patient care and medical education. The Internal Medicine department is responsible for the inter-department and inter-division coordination, medical resident training and patient bed assignments. Medical practice meetings are held every month. The education programs also include the training of the intern Doctors. In addition to specialist training in each division, there were Grand Round and Clinical pathological conference (CPC) held on every Thursday afternoon. On every Wednesday evening, the Chief resident physicians make ward rounds, and specialists from different divisions are invited to discuss clinical cases as well as common clinical problems. Students and Teachers are encouraged to participate in question and answer (Q&A) via two-way communication teaching mode. For intern Doctors, the chief resident physician demonstrates basic clinical skills on regular bases. To improve out-patient treatment skills for young Doctors, we had special OPD teaching activities and experienced teachers from each division, trained only one resident and one intern Doctor each time.
From the year 2000 on, we provide a two-day pre-job orientation course annually for all new resident doctors. Apart from the basic clinical skills, the course also includes medical ethics, Physician-Patient communications skills, and some medical legal issues. The aim of this orientation course is to assist the new resident Doctors to adapt to the new working environment more smoothly. To coordinate and provide supports for local medical clinics, we dispatch doctors to local hospitals in regards to medical education, and patient care on a rotating bases, thus to improve the quality of medical services in local hospital/clinics.
