JGIM and the International Nature of General Internal Medicine

Excerpt

When we assumed the editorship of JGIM, one of our priorities was to enhance the international scope and relevance of the journal. We are aware from Springer, JGIM’s publisher, that 42% of JGIM’s readership and 12% of JGIM’s authors are international. Part of our mission is to support general internal medicine broadly through the functions of the Journal. General internal medicine (GIM) specifically and primary care (PC) overall face numerous challenges in today’s medical environment, and it is readily apparent that the issues we face globally have much more in common than they are different. A Chief of Family Medicine in Kazakhstan expressed frustration with Dr. Elnicki about the difficulty she has in getting medical students interested in primary care practice, particularly in rural areas. We recently published an article from Switzerland that outlined similar issues in primary care career choice that the Swiss are facing.¹ Both are distressingly familiar to the American dilemmas in GIM and PC. The health care systems of the above mentioned countries are vastly different from each other and from the United States, but all can benefit from the experiences and proposed solutions of the others. …