University Training and the Practicing Internist

Abstract

To the Editor. —I commend you for recognizing the discrepancy between university training and the practicing internist's role as stated in your October editorial, A Change in the Training Model for the Practicing Internist ( Arch Intern Med 126: 694-697, 1970). The general internists are indeed serving as primary physicians and, in this capacity, deal with a different group of patients from that which they ob- served during the typical university training period. I do not feel, however, that to have a segment of the university medical center's facilities practice primary patient care medicine is an appropriate answer to this problem. The usual professor is traditionally ill-equipped to play the role of the primary physician. If his interests and talents were in tune with this area of clinical practice, he most likely would not have remained in the university setting. The need to change the medical residency to a