Departments of Instruction

Division of General Medicine

The Division of General Medicine has an active program involving teaching, patient care, and research. A major responsibility of the division is clinical care, which includes teaching ambulatory care at any of 10 ambulatory clinic sites. Division faculty also are involved in HIV care and teaching at the Thomas Street AIDS Clinic, a facility of the Harris County Hospital District. Activities at Memorial Hermann - Texas Medical Center, Lyndon B. Johnson General Hospital, and the Harris County Psychiatric Center include supervision of a general medicine consultation service and participation on several inpatient ward services throughout the year.

Training of house officers and medical students is a priority of the division. House officers are assigned to the ambulatory care services. Additionally, each house officer meets weekly with a panel of patients and follows this group of patients throughout the training program. All ambulatory clinic activities are supervised by full-time faculty who provide an active, multi-disciplinary teaching program. The opportunity to acquire a formal education is provided by all inpatient ward teams, and a consult service staffed by full-time attending faculty and house officers provides consultation to all specialty groups within the hospital.

Research activities of the division focus on safety and access to health care by adults, including marginalized populations. The faculty of General Medicine have several NIH-sponsored grants in patient safety, the bioethics of informed consent for colon cancer screening, the use of the Internet for preventive health services, and the study of pathogenesis of mycobacteria tuberculosis. Other research efforts include the validity of data on the Internet, HIV treatment and compliance, and traveler’s diarrhea. Several faculty are involved in research in the area of teaching medical students and residents.

The faculty of the Division of General Medicine are dedicated to providing excellent training programs. It participates with the Department of Pediatrics and Family and Community Medicine in the Joint Primary Care Fellowship, which affords participants an opportunity to take courses at the UT School of Public Health for a Master’s of Public Health degree.