Introduction
The mission of the Internal Medicine Department at the University Hospital of Bellvitge is to offer specialist hospital care in general internal medicine to adult patients in the hospital environment of the Southern Metropolitan Area of Barcelona, and specialist care for the elderly in different areas, such as systemic autoimmune diseases, vascular risk diseases, thromboembolic diseases, chronic medical diseases and those related to the elderly, adult primary immunodeficiencies, drug and alcohol dependence, and other minority hereditary diseases, both nationally and internationally.
The Internal Medicine Department is made up of two sections (Hospitalised Patient Care Section and Outpatient Patient Care Section), and it takes part in a group of functional inter-disciplinary units with other hospitalisation, outpatient and home-care systems. In terms of outpatient consultations, these include general internal medicine, and specialist consultations on autoimmune diseases (lupus, sclerodermia, dermatopolymyositis, vasculitis, Sjögren, sarcoidosis, etc.), vascular risk, geriatrics, thromboembolic disease, adult acquired immunodeficiencies, drug and alcohol dependence, or minority diseases, among others. The Internal Medicine Department also includes the hospital’s Allergology Unit, which conducts almost all its activity in the Outpatient and Day Hospital Area.
Team
Head of Service
Cap de Secció
Senior teacher
Specialist Doctors
Head of Nursing Area
Nurse Manager
Relevant aspects
Units
- Functional Autoimmune and Systemic Disease Unit (UFMAS)
- Functional Vascular Risk Unit (URV)
- Geriatric Unit (GER) (dementia, orthogeriatrics, cardiogeriatrics)
- Functional Heart Failure Unit (UFIC) Functional Thromboembolic Disease Unit (UMTE)
- Functional Adult Primary Immunodeficiencies Unit (UFIPA)
- Drug and Alcohol Dependence Detox Unit (UDDA)
- Allergology Unit Quick Diagnosis Unit (UDR)
- Consultative Medicine Unit (surgical specialists and primary care)
- Minority Diseases Unit (Rendu-Osler-Weber and other hereditary genetic diseases)
- Day hospital General internal medicine
Care
- The Internal Medicine Department provides care to hospitalised and outpatient patients, and provides and is related to a wide range of alternatives to conventional hospitalisation, such as the Day Hospital, the Quick Diagnosis Unit, the Home Hospitalisation Unit, or the Multi-disciplinary Community Heart Failure Unit. Our Quick Diagnosis Unit treats Primary Care patients with suspected severe diseases that do not require admission but need a quick diagnosis (cancer, haematological diseases, lymphadenopathies, etc.), and it forms an essential, strategy part of the Outpatient Hospital Medicine project that our Department has been promoting from some time.
- We often provide cross-consultation with many surgical departments in the hospital, and we play a proactive role in patients over the age of 75 who are admitted urgently to the HUB with a broken femur (orthogeriatrics), along with the Orthopaedic Surgery and Traumatology Department. We coordinate with the socio-healthcare systems in our environment, and we manage the Drug Dependence Detox Unit from where we coordinate with the Drug Dependence Care and Follow-up Centres.
Research
Lines of research
- Systemic autoimmune diseases (database of 650 lupus patients, 650 sarcoidosis, etc.)
- Autoinflammatory diseases
- Ageing
- Chronic heart failure
- Arterial vascular (arteriosclerosis) and venous (thromboembolic diseases) diseases
- Minority diseases
- Drug dependence
- Immunodeficiencies
Education
Degree education
- From an educational viewpoint, the mission of the Internal Medicine Department is the participation in the training of physicians in the Bellvitge Teaching Unit of the University of Barcelona, the training of internal medicine residents (7 per year), who share their training with the Infectious Diseases Department:
- The residents have a training programme that includes an initial 2 years of rotations with other speciality services (cardiology, Pneumology, Neurology, Nephrology, Intensive Medicine, etc.), 2 years of training in Internal Medicine with rotations that include the conventional hospitalisation ward, the outpatients area, the Quick Diagnosis Unit, or the Orthogeriatrics Unit, and 1 full year in the Infectious Diseases Department. We also help all residents and encourage them to become involved in voluntary external rotation for 2 months in a hospital abroad during the 5th year, to supplement their training in the subject they decide on (the latest residents have been, for example, in London, Dublin, Paris, Baltimore (US), Lyle, Madrid, Buenos Aires, Mexico, Freiburg, Manaus, Mozambique, and Rome, etc.).
- Our professionals include 7 professors from the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of the University of Barcelona (Bellvitge campus).
Masters and accredited courses
Location
Main Building at Bellvitge University Hospital
c/ Feixa Llarga, sn.
08907 L’Hospitalet de Llobregat. Barcelona
Floor 7
Telephone number 93 260 76 99