The Veterans Affairs Medical Center is a 530-bed general medical and surgical hospital located directly across the street from both the Tulane University School of Medicine and Charity Hospital. Two hundred sixty beds are reserved for medicine and medical subspecialty patients and there are approximately 7,000 admissions per year to the medical service. Specialized facilities in the hospital include a coronary care unit, a medical intensive care unit, a chronic hemodialysis unit and a cardiac catheterization laboratory. The VA Medical Center is the site of a well organized department of research with a full-time research director. A large endocrinology research laboratory and general medical, hematology, radioisotope and cardiopulmonary research laboratories are components of the extensive investigation activities that take place there.
Residents have rotations in general medicine, medical consultation, and the medical subspecialties.
In addition to all of the recognized subspecialties in internal medicine, there is a fully staffed division of primary care medicine with emphasis on emergency and outpatient diagnosis and treatment. Each resident has a continuity clinic at the VA onehalf day per week. This clinic is staffed by members of the Section of General Internal Medicine. The Veterans Affairs Medical Center has completed a large expansion program to provide additional ambulatory care facilities and added research laboratory space. This has added to the quality of the patient care delivered.