Established in October of 1980, the department of internal medicine actually had operated for three months before its opening. The first chief was Dr. 楊蓴. In July 1993, Dr. 周湘台 came back from Japan and became the next chief of the department while Dr. 楊蓴 got promoted to consultant of the department. In November 1999, Dr. 洪瑞松, deputy superintendent of China Medical University Hospital (CMUH), took charge as the chief of the department while Dr. 周湘台 got promoted to consultant of the department. In March 2000, Dr. 邱昌芳 became the next chief of the department. At that time, our department was already in a large-scale operation and had built great reputation in the medical field.
 

In December 2003, Prof. 黃秋錦 was invited to take over the position of deputy superintendent and chief of the department. In 2008, Prof. Huang became the president of new-opening Taipei branch and quit the chief of the department of CMUH. In August 2008, Dr. 徐武輝, vice chief of the department, got promoted to the chief of the department of internal medicine. Now, there are 134 attending physicians and 16 fellows, all qualified medical specialists in internal medicine, and 38 resident physicians in training.

 

There are originally 8 subspecialty divisions and 3 intensive care units in our department, namely, cardiology, chest medicine and critical care medicine (respiratory therapy and chest), nephrology, gastroenterology and hepatology, endocrinology & metabolism, rheumatology, hematology and oncology, infectious disease. In April 2006, the division of general medicine was established to cooperate with the national medical policy of Health Administration and to develop physicians’ professionalism. To meet the requirement of development in August 2015, the division of cardiology was expanded to a cardiovascular unit, which consists of the divisions of cardiovascular intervention, cardiovascular radiology, peripheral vascular examination, cardiac arrhythmia and preventive medicine. All the members in the department of internal medicine are passionate and enthusiastic. They made every effort to practice the principle of medical center, service, education and research, and had already got recognition.

 

In the aspect of medical service, the average number of available appointment for doctors in the department is 1559 per week. The average number of outpatient visits is 48155 per month and the number of inpatient is 677 including 54 in intensive care units, 59 with  severe illnesses and 564 in general wards.

 

In the aspect of education, among 134 attending physicians, 63 have teaching qualification including 17 professors, 13 associate professors, 23 assistant professors and 10 instructors. The average number of interns per year is 342 including 112 seventh-grade interns and 230 fifth-grade interns. In addition, we also cooperate with the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Joint Commission of Taiwan to promote one-year post graduate training of internal medicine. Approximately 57 post graduate year physicians was trained each year from 2014 to 2016. We have participated in the training program for clinical teachers since 2009. From 2009 to 2016, 326 physicians had got the qualification of clinical teacher.

 

In the aspect of research, the achievement is fruitful. The numbers of papers published in SCI journals in recent years are 159(2014), 171(2015) and 163(2016).