Physicians in the Division of General Medicine play a leading role in educating the internists of tomorrow as well as providing comprehensive medical care for adults today. Education is the critical focus for our faculty, whether they are supervising medical students and residents in the patient clinics, or using their teaching skills to improve patient care. As educators, we concentrate on the expert medical training of a new generation of doctors. As researchers, we conduct health-services research to understand how doctors and patients communicate and make that interaction more effective. As health-care providers, we recognize that our patients are individuals from diverse cultures and backgrounds. Our clinicians and researchers are committed to studying and overcoming the barriers to providing good medical care through teaching and research, and to applying that new knowledge to enhance care delivery.

Division physicians provide primary-care services and geriatric care at UC Davis. Faculty offer expert diagnosis and treatment of a wide variety of health problems and also teach the outpatient-care curriculum for residents in the internal-medicine program. Our physicians actively consult with doctors from all the subspecialties, enhancing general medical care for both inpatients and outpatients. We provide specialized expertise in elder-abuse prevention, rheumatic and arthritic conditions, preoperative evaluation, and Alzheimer's disease and related disorders. The division has also developed an Anticoagulation Service for UC Davis Health System designed to improve patient care and prevent complications associated with use of blood thinners.

Research activities in the division will bring improvements to many facets of medicine, including education, provision of quality care, and appropriate use of drugs and tests, thus ensuring more optimum patient health. Division members have created the largest clinical trials center at UC Davis, which focuses on the study of new drugs, innovative medical diagnostic tests and treatment of serious medical conditions. Our faculty play a central role in teaching the fundamentals of clinical research and epidemiology to other faculty and physicians-in-training, and they are at the forefront of learning how to better measure patient expectations and satisfaction.

The division's accomplished geriatric clinician-educators are training future physicians to care for the 76 million "baby boomers" who will soon reach retirement age. These doctors will develop better approaches to treating common geriatric syndromes such as urinary incontinence, Alzheimer-type dementias and balance/ gait disorders. Our commitment to geriatric medicine helped create the Internal Medicine Geriatric Clinic, a place that provides special care for older adults whose independence is threatened. Here, physicians have shifted their care emphasis from "disease management" to "people management" - finding strategies to help patients with chronic disease function at maximal capacity. We have also established an endowed chair to head the new Center for Healthy Aging and Geriatrics, providing leadership that will link our geriatric care and education efforts to community programs and to research.