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Attending-Only VA Inpatient Medicine Service

The Iowa City VA Health Care System serves 184,000 veterans in 50 counties in eastern Iowa, western Illinois, and northern Missouri. The VA operates in close affiliation with UIHC.

Our resident-staffed services are modeled like traditional academic services in which the attending faculty member is supported by a team of residents and medical students. The teams work and learn together to provide the very best care to the patients assigned to their team. Faculty who provide this traditional academic service usually are appointed at the rank of Clinical Assistant Professor. Faculty primarily assigned to these services are typically scheduled ON service in half month blocks, rotating ON another service or OFF service.

The primary responsibility of the Inpatient Service is to manage the clinical problems of the acutely ill requiring hospitalization. The Service consists of three teams (Red, White and Blue); each are staffed by an attending, a senior resident, two interns, as well as medical and pharmacy students. The Red Team is staffed by either a cardiologist or pulmonologist, while the White Team is staffed by a Hospitalist. The Blue Team may be staffed by attendings from a variety of specialties including Infectious Diseases, Rheumatology, Endocrinology, or Nephrology. White Team attendings also provide consultation services to surgery and psychiatry patients. The Inpatient Service is staffed 24/7 and receives patients in the hospital from either a direct admission from the referring community or a transfer from another treating service inside the hospital, including those from the Emergency Treatment Center.