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Multidisciplinary medicine

In 2009, we established a new acute care ward in NTUH that introduced the system of hospital medicine from the United States. This new hospitalist ward provided care to acute general medical patients awaiting admission in the emergency department. There were three attending physicians acting as hospitalists in the very beginning. As the maturation and growing demand, the division of hospital medicine scaled up to two wards in 2013, and recruited more and more young hospitalists to work for acute inpatient care. The wards were also renamed as multidisciplinary combined care ward. A comprehensive working team has been developed including hospitalists, nurse practitioners, physical therapists, dietician, pharmacist, social worker and hospice co-management nurse. Nowadays, the division of hospital medicine becomes one subspecialty of the Department of Internal Medicine. Division of Hospital Medicine receive two grants from the Ministry of Health and Welfare, R.O.C.. We devoted our efforts and established Taiwan Society of Hospital Medicine in 2015, and Taiwan Association of Hospital Medicine in 2018. Hospital medicine focuses on inpatient and transitional care, promotes Choosing Wisely learned from American Board of Internal Medicine, and educates point-of-care ultrasound (PoCUS) of hospitalists to residents and students. The missions of hospital medicine in Taiwan are to lead a paradigm shift of inpatient care integration, to educate frontline primary care generalist, and to connect with international trend of healthcare system. In medical education, hospital medicine is the best candidate to practice interprofessional education (IPE) which is promoted by World Health Organization.