General Medicine (work experience)

[whiskers]

I just got work experience at St. Helier Hospital (heard it's not that great? lol) and I'm assigned to a consultant in General Medicine? What exactly does that entail??
(And what about acute admissions?! I work on an A&E ward(just started) and i cant see anything wrong with any of the patients...?)
Also, when i did work experience last year, i was assigned to a consultant, but i spent the entire time with SHOs...do you think that will happen this time? I hope so, cause they're a lot friendier and you actually learn more! (Although consultants' opinions are valuable, as well)

[caster]

General medicine is the hospital specialty that deals with adults with physical problems with the function (rather than the structure) of a particular body system.

Typically, they may deal with patients who have had an MI (heart attack), stroke, acute diabetes, acute asthma, COPD exacerbation, pneumonia, diarrhoea, heart failure, various infectious diseases and certain types of cancer. There may also be patients who generally feel unwell, tired all the time, short of breath, etc.

In some hospitals, general medicine is divided up into subspecialties such as Endocrinology, Gastroenterology, Infectious Diseases, Chest Medicine, Geriatrics, etc, but in smaller hospitals (and some larger ones) it is all dealt with by one team of general physicians.

Acute admissions is basically a waiting room with beds, where patients who have already been seen by their GP or A&E staff and have been decided to admit to hospital wait for a proper ward space to become available. Most wards these days have all their beds full, and patients can't stay in A&E for more than 4 hours (Government target), so instead patients end up in some kind of acute ward. Many patients may not seem particularly "ill" but they may have a more serious underlying possible diagnosis which doctors want to exclude with further investigations. Some patients will go home fairly quickly, maybe they are just on the acute ward while they wait for an x-ray or blood test result, whilst others will get admitted to a proper ward and will stay in hospital for a long time.