General internal medicine is an integrative medicine that specifically includes medical emergency situations, orientation and critical or chronic monitoring of patients with complex pathologies.
The General Internal Medicine Division (SMIG) provides care for hospitalized patients, often in collaboration with internal medicine specialties. Residents in training also participate in Emergency Room medical activities, adult intensive care and internal medicine specialties.
It also provides intra-hospital consultations in internal medicine for surgery, specifically but not exclusively in orthopedics, and works closely with the neurovascular unit within the Neurology Division, as well as with the hospital cell unit.
Care quality provided by SMIG is based on a multidisciplinary collaboration between physicians, caregivers and assistant caregivers, physiotherapists, social welfare assistants, liaison nurses, management assistant nurses and medical secretaries.
Pathologies treated
The SMIG admits nearly 8,000 patients per year. The main pathologies treated in the division are:
- Decompensated heart failure
- Coronary disease
- Exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
- Home-acquired pneumonia
- Decompensated cirrhosis of the liver
- Pulmonary embolism
- Lung cancer
- Kidney failure
- Decompensated diabetes
- Etc.
Admission to SMIG
Patients being cared for at SMIG come to the division through three different channels:
- Emergency admissions after an evaluation in the Emergency Room (UMIAU), or the “orange line”
- Direct admissions, following the request by their attending physician or from specialized consultation via pre-hospitalization
- Transfer from another hospital department or division (e.g., surgery or intensive care) or, more rarely, from another hospital in Switzerland or abroad.