Internal Medicine Doctor Kimberly Dowdell, MD

Kimberly Dowdell, MD, an internal medicine physician, sees patients of all ages to keep them healthy and manage chronic diseases. It’s important to her to be an advocate for her patients, build relationships and keep them in a healthy state of living. Dowdell is also one of the primary doctors involved with the E-Consult program, which collaborates with other specialties for faster results.

I’m Kim Dowdell, an internal medicine physician. I see 18-year olds, up to 100-year olds. I help them with both their preventive care, so helping to keep 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 enjoyed all of the different facets, all the different specialties. When it came down to residency, I really couldn’t 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 they’re 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 we’re going to spend that first appointment really getting to know each other. I think it’s 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 being the advocate for my patient. UVA, in particular, is a big place that I could have a patient that’s seeing a lot of different specialists. I know that, when it comes down to it, I’m the one in the middle who’s helping them navigate, and being able to help them coordinate so that they get the best possible care is really rewarding to me.