General Internal Medicine Physicians
Explore safer careers (1)
Lower estimated automation risk
Why it fits
Directly reuses adult diagnosis, medication decisions, care coordination, handoffs, and acute disease knowledge.
Alternative careers
Related career paths that build on similar skills and experience
Why it fits
Transfers prevention, disease patterns, outcomes, public health data, and population risk thinking.
Why it fits
Fits physicians moving into clinic operations, staffing, quality, compliance, access, and patient flow.
Why it fits
Uses internal medicine expertise to teach diagnosis, pharmacology, clinical reasoning, and patient care.
Occupation snapshot
What does this snowflake show?
What's this?
We rate jobs using four factors. These are:
- Chance of being automated
- Job growth
- Wages
- Volume of available positions
These are some key things to think about when job hunting.
Risk & user votes
Calculated automation risk
Minimal Risk (0-20%): This occupation appears difficult to replace end-to-end with current or near-future automation, including AI software and robotics. Roles in this range usually depend on human judgement, creativity, care, leadership, specialist expertise, or adapting to messy real-world situations. AI and machines may still change parts of the work, but the occupation is likely to remain a distinct human role.
More information on what this score is, and how it is calculated is available here.
Human strengths important in this job
These are human abilities and work contexts that are important in this occupation. They may help explain why parts of the role are harder to replace end-to-end, but they are not the only inputs into the automation score.
Assisting and caring for others
Very importantWhy this matters
Decision-making and problem solving
Very importantWhy this matters
Psychology knowledge
Very importantWhy this matters
Education and training expertise
Very importantWhy this matters
Working directly with the public
Quite importantWhy this matters
Show 5 more strengths
Persuasion
Quite importantWhy this matters
Thinking creatively
Quite importantWhy this matters
Coordinating others’ work
Quite importantWhy this matters
Consulting and advising others
Quite importantWhy this matters
Active learning
Quite importantWhy this matters
What users think
Based on 379 votes
Our visitors have voted there's a low chance this occupation will be automated. This assessment is further supported by the calculated automation risk level, which estimates 10% chance of automation.
What do you think the risk of automation is?
What is the likelihood that General Internal Medicine Physicians will be replaced by robots or artificial intelligence within the next 20 years?
Sentiment
Based on user votes over time
View sentiment trend
How opinions have changed over time
Pay & outlook
Wages
In 2024, the median annual wage for General Internal Medicine Physicians was $236,350 ($114 per hour).
The median annual wage for General Internal Medicine Physicians was 377.5% higher than the national median annual wage, which stood at $49,500.
View wage trend
Wages over time
Growth
The number of 'General Internal Medicine Physicians' job openings is expected to rise 3.3% by 2034
View employment trend
Total employment, and estimated job openings
Updated projections are due 09-2025.
Volume
As of 2024 there were 66,640 people employed as 'General Internal Medicine Physicians' within the United States.
This represents around < 0.001% of the employed workforce across the country
Put another way, around 1 in 2 thousand people are employed as 'General Internal Medicine Physicians'.
People also viewed
Job description
Diagnose and provide nonsurgical treatment for a wide range of diseases and injuries of internal organ systems. Provide care mainly for adults and adolescents, and are based primarily in an outpatient care setting.
O*NET-SOC code: 29-1216.00
What people are saying (10)
AI replacing a huge number of doctors: High
AI automating jobs of many doctors : HIGH
So what do doctors do that AI can do ?
1. type up clinic letters by dictation or typing themselves: EASILY AUTOMATED
2. prescribing standard medications for a disease ONCE DIAGNOSED: easy to automate
3. referring to other specialities / involving other specialties if test results abnormal: EASILY AUTOMATED
4. have frequent tea coffee breaks and date lovely nurses: difficult to automate.......
5. DIAGNOSE ILLNESS......if a monkey can put all the data into the computer by talking to a patient, then the AI will outperform the doctor and suggest the TOP THREE BEST POSSIBILE/ LIKELY diagnosis... IT CAN PRINT OUT blood requests and scans for all those diseases instantly and forward it to all departments. ... and once the data comes back the final diagnosis can be confirmed....
BUT TAKING ONE LOOK AT A PATIENT AND SAYING YOU ARE OK, you can go home, no medications needed....NO WAY YOU CAN AUTOMATE THAT.....everyone and everything that walks will be taken blood out of and scanned to death ... life will become slowed down by all the testing.. but hey, the tests will be faster right? we will have more CT scans and MRIs or even better scanners for everyone at their own home right? well if so, yes, doctors will have to be renamed to HEALTH AI MANAGERS
We literally have so many AI databases that can help identify illnesses from symptoms and biostatistics. It's a project that's being worked on by many tech companies. Even doctors are already using this.
There exist remote surgeon robots that allow surgeons to perform surgery without being physically present. The only reason there's a human there is because we are too afraid of AI decision-making for liability issues.
There's no technical barrier to a fully automated single-purpose AI replacing specialist doctors slowly.
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