Message from the Chair
"Stanford Medicine is inspired by its principles, energized by its aspirations, and committed to improving the health and health care of people throughout the world."
—Ralph Horwitz, MD
Welcome to the Department of Medicine Website
I am honored to lead this great department which is notable both for its past and current record of achievement and for its unflagging optimism for a future of limitless possibilities. We are fully aware that our success as a singular department is linked to our vision as an innovative department: to strive to create educational programs that ignite a commitment to lifelong learning; to venerate research and scholarship without constraining its form; to balance general medicine with specialty medicine and laboratory research with patient/population sciences; and to shape the Profession of Medicine so that our values, behaviors, and policies honor our duty to our patients and the broader society.
The Stanford Department of Medicine is among the premier departments in the nation. The Department has approximately 190 full time faculty making us the smallest department among all of the research intensive medical schools in the nation. But our small size has not limited the impact of our faculty on the science of medicine, or on the educational and clinical programs that are helping to define the future of Internal Medicine.
The Department also has 100 residents and nearly 150 fellows who are training in Internal Medicine and its subspecialties. The department’s educational programs are renowned for their rigor and innovation, and for the remarkable integration of the medical school with one of the world’s leading universities. As a result, Stanford residents and fellows are as able to work with a faculty member in the Business School or the Bioengineering program as in the medical school. The lack of disciplinary boundaries is a hallmark of Stanford and one of this department’s greatest assets.
We are also fortunate to offer clinical care and training in a three hospital system that includes our University hospital (Stanford Hospital and Clinics), a VA (Palo Alto VA Health Care System), and a county hospital (Santa Clara Valley Medical Center). Each hospital provides a distinctive emphasis in complexity of care (SHC), system of health care (VA), and commitment to the underserved (SCVMC). Taken together, the clinical experiences at Stanford are unsurpassed at any academic medical center in the nation.
These many assets carry with them a great responsibility. Stanford Medicine is inspired by its principles, energized by its aspirations and committed to improving the health and health care of people throughout the world. Students and residents in Medicine at Stanford are filled with the hope that their patients will see them as competent and comforting; but we are faced too often with unceasing talk about medical market share and medical malpractice, and the stark realization that patient outcomes are shaped as much by social conditions as by medical therapy.
We readily acknowledge our responsibility to our students, residents and faculty to create an environment at Stanford that is equal to their abilities, responsive to their idealism and respectful of the public’s trust in the practice of Medicine. We welcome your interest in Stanford and invite you to explore our department more fully through this website.
All who choose to join us in the Department of Medicine should know that we seek to work together in a common effort to ensure that Stanford Medicine is unsurpassed anywhere in the world.
We wish you well wherever your path in Medicine takes you.
Ralph I. Horwitz