Internal Medicine
Department of Medicine is the largest discipline in the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Turku. All the major fields of medicine are covered by the discipline: cardiology, endocrinology, gastroenterology, hematology, infectious diseases, nephrology and rheumatology. The personnel of the Department of Medicine consists of full-time professors, two/three senior lecturers and 22 docents. Furthermore, there is one full-time instruction nurse position. The head of the Department of Medicine of the University of Turku is currently Prof. Jorma Viikari, who is also physician-in-chief of the Department of Medicine in the Turku University Central Hospital.
The main task of the discipline is to give medical students the basic education in medicine and to provide high-quality training for medical doctors during their specialization in medicine. Currently, there are 22 training positions for specialization at the Department of Medicine. In addition to the above, the Department of Medicine is actively involved in making sure that all medical doctors working in southwestern Finland have sufficient knowledge of medicine. This is accomplished by organizing courses on various topics of medicine regularly. The discipline is also involved in training foreign medical students and doctors during their visits in Turku University Central Hospital.
Research in the Department of Medicine is active and all major fields of medicine are covered. The ultimate goal of the research performed by the Department of Medicine is not only to generate new data on medical science, but also to train medical students and medical doctors in scientific work and concomitantly to improve their understanding on the value of science for the future. Furthermore, this is the way whereby the discipline quarantees that the latest news in the field of medicine will be available in clinical practice in Turku University Central Hospital as early as possible.