Hi, IÕm Kim Dowdell. IÕm an internal medicine physician. I see 18-year olds, up to 100-year olds, and I help them with both their preventive care, so helping keeping them healthy as well as chronic disease management, like diabetes, COPD, things like that. I went into internal medicine because I liked the breadth of medicine. I really enjoyed all of the different facets, all the different specialties. When it came down to residency, I really couldnÕt decide if there was one specialty I liked more than the others, so internal medicine seemed to be a good fit. Specifically, I went into primary care because I like the longitudinal relationship with the patient. I enjoy taking care of them when theyÕre healthy, as well as helping them when they have a chronic disease or things like that. When patients come in to see me, they can expect that weÕre going to spend that first appointment really getting to know each other. I think itÕs important in primary care to really get to know your physician so that you can feel comfortable talking to them about all kinds of problems so that we can troubleshoot and get you into a healthy state of living. The most rewarding part about my job being a primary care physician is really being the advocate for my patient. UVA in particular is a big place that I could have a patient thatÕs seeing a lot of different specialists and I know that, when it comes down to it, IÕm the one in the middle whoÕs helping them navigate and being able to help them coordinate so that they get the best possible care is really rewarding to me.