Medicine

Protected Educational Time/Educational Programs

Seeing a variety of patients and medical conditions is vital to internal medicine residency training.  However, educational sessions that are practical, interactive, and cover the breadth and depth of internal medicine are just as important in producing a successful general internist or sub-specialty physician.  It is crucial to point out that simply having conferences is not good enough when there are competing priorities. Our philosophy is to provide residents with protected, uninterrupted educational time.  Since 2007, the internal medicine residency program has provides a coordinated series of educational sessions that are protected from interruption by patient care responsibilities for housestaff.  The overall program includes:

• Academic Half-Day: every Wednesday throughout the year.  This conference series replaces the traditional noon conference.  PGY-1 residents have dedicated core lectures Wednesday afternoons to enhance their internship and PGY-2 and PGY-3 residents meet Wednesday mornings for acclaimed lecture series and integrated board review designed to expand their knowledge base and to assist with preparation for the United States Medical Licensing Board Examination 
• Noon Conferences: every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. Noon reports are held daily and feature a complex or unique case presented by a senior resident and moderated by a chief resident.  These conferences are highly regarded and are attended by all interns and residents, as well as GIM and sub-specialty faculty.  In addition to working through a case with the audience, a PICO question relevant to the case is presented with each case in order to further our evidence based learning.   
• Clinicopathologic Conference (CPC): monthly at both FLMH and the VA.  Each month an expert clinician is presented with the clinical course, relevant laboratory results and radiological findings of a particular patient and asked to develop a case discussion to present to students, residents and faculty.  In addition to learning how our expert presenter would approach a challenging case, radiology and pathology also present relevant findings which lead to an unveiling of the diagnosis.
• Morbidity & Mortality Rounds: monthly at both FLMH and the VA.  As there is much to be learned from every case M&M conferences are important learning tools.  In addition to the traditional management based M&M conferences, we also present Morbidity, Mortality & Improvement cases 4 times a year.  These are interdisciplinary conferences that focus on a system based issues that may contribute to an adverse outcome.  The key products of the conferences are workgroups (including administrators, faculty, residents and staff) who meet subsequently to address the specific issues and improve patient care.  
• Grand Rounds: Friday mornings.  Selected speakers present relevant information on medical topics, new and innovative research or breakthroughs within Medicine.
• Core Skills Program (IM 101, 201 and 301): One week of protected learning in each residency year.  Sessions are conducted in small groups covering a broad array of topics.  IM 301 (for PGY-3s) is dedicated to high yield board review. 
• Yearly retreats: One to two day retreats for each residency class.  The retreats are designed to provide residents with ample time for building camaraderie and providing the program leadership with feedback.  The PGY-3 retreat is particularly popular with residents and is held either in Lake Geneva or the Wisconsin Dells.
• Evidence-based medicine sessions: A dedicated series of interactive lectures are held during the Ambulatory Immersion rotation, which are designed to enhance residents’ ability to critically appraise journal articles and to encourage them to apply their knowledge in their practice of evidence-based health care.