Acute Medicine

What is Acute Internal Medicine?

Acute Internal Medicine (AIM) is a vibrant, rewarding, and rapidly developing medical speciality, concerned with the assessment, diagnosis and management of adults presenting to secondary care with acute medical illness. It also involves the management of busy acute medical units (AMUs) to ensure they deliver high-quality, efficient and patient-centred care.

AIM is a hospital-based speciality, with the majority of the work involving care of medical patients around the time of admission to hospital. The spectrum of clinical problems encountered in the AMU is wide, and this variability enables trainees to become experts in assessment, investigation, diagnosis and management across multiple disciplines.

The History of AIM

AIM was formally recognised as a speciality in 2009, having previously been a subspeciality of General Internal Medicine (GIM). This was in response to the growing need for a senior medical presence supervising acute medical takes within an AMU environment. Over recent years,  Wales has expanded the number of training posts in this evolving field in recognition of the increasing number of appointments of Acute Physicians nationally.

Training in AIM in Wales

In Wales we currently have 16 training posts of four years duration. Entry to the Acute Medicine higher training programme can either be from Internal Medicine Training (IMT) or Acute Care Common Stem (ACCS).

The training programme is designed to provide trainees with a Certificate of Completion of Training (CCT) in AIM and GIM. The posts are a mixture of AMU, ambulatory care, elderly medicine, respiratory, cardiology and intensive care medicine rotations.

Our training programme is exciting and varied. The experience it offers is unique as it allows rotation through different specialties at registrar level in a variety of work settings and intensities. It also offers the opportunity for trainees to develop their own area of interest or special skill whilst satisfying the core curriculum requirements.

Further information on acute medicine training in Wales is available from Health Education and Improvement Wales and further information on acute medicine in general is at takeAIM.