you mean in society or as in when a patient gets admitted and what all the non-medical problems you deal with are? as a resident you don't really directly face a lot of the first one. for the second, there are plenty. part of the reason is that in IM you are almost always the primary service, which means you deal with ALL of the patient's problems.
i'll list some: patient non-compliance, patient's financial problems, insurance problems, patient's fears or need for further understanding of the situation, patient's issues with yourself such as gender specific medical degree (D.O.) perceived "race" age specialty, family members demanding tests or medicines, family members administering their own medicines, family members messing with the EMR and orders (they work in the hospital), family members wanting to withhold the diagnosis, family members tellin the patient not to take the medicines, family members demanding specific consults, family members not liking you, family members not supposed to visit the patient because of restraining orders or patient does not want family members to come up (divorce, etc), family members going crazy and yelling at staff, family members bringing patient food they should not be having (KFC, dunkin donuts, boxes of gummy worms), issues with competency, restraining patients, drugging patients with psychotropics, keeping patients against their will (legally), patients leaving AMA, finding surrogate decision makers, discussing end of life care, dealing with family members who have differences in opinion of end of life (although there are laws that dictate the order of heirarchy for surrogate decision making), patient's religion interfering with management (cannot be discharged on the weekend after sundown, blood products, etc), placement issues (nursing home vs SNF vs LTAC vs home health vs etc)
