A love letter to the specialty you didn’t know you needed.
Written by Laith Khweir, Take AIM Fellow. This blog can be read alongside the blog on Why Acute Medicine written in December 2025.
If you’re a medical student trying to decide on an elective, chances are you’re torn between something familiar, something prestigious, or something that looks good on paper. Acute medicine probably isn’t at the top of that list. And honestly? That’s exactly why it should be.
Acute medicine is one of the most misunderstood specialties in hospital medicine — and doing an elective in it might just change the way you think about your future career.
Why Choose an Elective in Acute Internal Medicine?
Choosing an elective is one of the few chances during medical school to step outside the curriculum and experience what being a doctor really feels like. If you’re looking for an elective that is fast-paced, supportive, and clinically transformative, an elective in Acute Internal Medicine (AIM) may be exactly what you’re looking for.
Acute Internal Medicine: medicine at the front door
Acute Internal Medicine is the specialty that sits at the heart of the hospital. Acute physicians care for adults during the first 24–72 hours of admission, managing undifferentiated, often critically unwell patients on the Acute Medical Unit (AMU) and Same Day Emergency Care (SDEC).
Chest pain, sepsis, heart failure, metabolic emergencies, frailty, collapse, and complex diagnostic challenges all arrive here first. AIM doctors thrive in uncertainty, prioritise the sickest patients, and make decisions that shape the rest of a patient’s hospital journey.
For medical students, it is one of the most immersive and authentic clinical experiences available.
An elective that makes you think — and act — like a doctor
Students consistently report that AIM electives accelerate their clinical development.
During an AIM elective you will:
- Learn how to assess undifferentiated patients
- Develop structured clinical reasoning under pressure
- Improve your ability to recognise and manage acute illness
- Understand risk, prioritisation, and escalation
- Gain confidence in making decisions with senior support
This is medicine in real time — and the skills you gain will stay with you regardless of your eventual specialty.
Breadth, variety, and no two days the same
If you enjoy variety and haven’t yet found your niche, AIM offers unrivalled breadth. In a single shift you may encounter patients across multiple specialties, age groups, and levels of acuity.
Rather than focusing on one organ system, AIM teaches you to see the whole patient — including frailty, comorbidities, social complexity, and functional status. It is a specialty for those who enjoy complexity and value generalist expertise.
A supportive and visible senior team
One of the defining features of AIM is the presence of senior clinicians on the shop floor. Consultants are closely involved in patient care and decision-making, creating an excellent learning environment for students. You learn real medicine – and fast.
This means:
- Regular bedside teaching
- Immediate feedback
- Opportunities to ask questions
- Feeling genuinely part of the team
Students on AIM electives are often surprised by how welcomed and involved they feel.
Acute physicians are experts in complexity, uncertainty and prioritisation. The breadth is unique and you develop generalist skills which particularly in the acute phase of an illness which is unmatched by any other speciality.
Immediate impact for patients
Acute Internal Medicine is incredibly rewarding. Early assessment, prompt diagnosis, and timely treatment can dramatically alter outcomes.
As a student, you will see how early decisions matter — and how good acute care improves patient experience, safety, and flow through the hospital system. Few specialties allow you to see the impact of your work so quickly.
A career built for flexibility and leadership
An AIM elective also offers insight into a specialty with a clear training pathway and diverse career options. Many AIM clinicians develop portfolio careers alongside clinical work, with interests in:
- Medical education and simulation
- Ultrasound and procedural skills
- Critical care and high-dependency medicine
- Quality improvement and leadership
- Same Day Emergency Care innovation
AIM is a forward-thinking specialty, led by clinicians who are passionate about improving acute care for patients and staff alike.
Why Take AIM?
Take AIM exists to showcase Acute Internal Medicine as a dynamic, rewarding, and sustainable career. By choosing an AIM elective, you’ll experience first-hand the values that define the specialty: teamwork, adaptability, clinical excellence, and compassion.
Whether AIM becomes your chosen specialty or simply shapes the way you practise medicine, an elective in Acute Internal Medicine is an investment in your future as a doctor.
So why choose an acute medicine elective?
Because it will:
- Make you a better medical student
- Make you a more confident future doctor
- Expose you to outstanding role models
- Show you what frontline medicine really looks like
- Possibly — unexpectedly — help you find your specialty
Even if you don’t end up choosing acute medicine, you’ll leave with skills that benefit you wherever you go.
And if you do fall in love with it? Welcome. The specialty needs curious, compassionate, adaptable doctors — and medical students like you are its future.