Welcome

Are you wondering what is Internal Medicine, and what is an Internist? 

Aptly described in Wikipedia...

"Internists" are "specialist physicians trained to manage particularly complex or multisystem disease conditions that single-organ-disease specialists may not be trained to deal with. They may be asked to tackle undifferentiated presentations that cannot be easily fitted within the expertise of a single-organ specialty, such as dyspnea, fatigue, weight loss, chest pain, confusion or change in conscious state. 

General Internal Medicine specialists do not provide necessarily less expertise than single-organ specialists, rather, they are trained for a specific role of caring for patients with multiple simultaneous problems or complex comorbidities.

Perhaps because it is complex to explain treatment of diseases that are not localised to a single-organ, there has been confusion about the meaning of internal medicine and the role of an "internist". Internists are qualified physicians with postgraduate training in internal medicine and should not be confused with "interns", who are doctors in their first year of residency training (officially the term intern is no longer in use). They are also not "family physicians", "family practitioners", or "general practitioners", or "GPs", whose training is not solely concentrated on adults and may include surgery, obstetrics, and pediatrics."  In this regard, if you are an adult with a complex medical condition, your family doctor or nurse practitioner may refer you to see an internal medicine specialist for advice on diagnosing and managing a specific condition. 

While Internists are trained in managing diseases affecting multiple organ systems, they are specialists and, much like other medical specialists, are usually involved in addressing a specific symptom or condition for which patients were referred to them. As such, appointments are usually focused on the specific issue for which patients are referred and other unrelated health issues are best to discuss with your primary care provider. 

If you do not have a primary care provider, you can put your name on the provincial wait list at this link - https://hcc3.hcc.moh.gov.on.ca/HCCWeb/faces/layoutHCCHomePage.xhtml?sW=2560&sH=1080&btype=Netscape&bver=5.0%20(Windows%20NT%2010.0;%20Win64;%20x64)%20AppleWebKit/537.36%20(KHTML,%20like%20Gecko)%20Chrome/112.0.0.0%20Safari/537.36&ajax=y

If you reside in Muskoka, you can also put your name on the waitlist for the Cottage Country Family Health Team here - https://www.southmuskokawaitlist.com/