Original Clinical Research or Extensive Case Report

Scholarly activity is a valued and integral part of the residents’ training. Each resident, under the mentorship of a faculty member, demonstrates this commitment by completing or participating in original clinical research and/or preparing an extensive case report or a detailed review of a clinical or research topic.

In the first year of training, each resident presents a case at noon conference and leads an interactive discussion of the differential diagnoses, laboratory data and diagnostic evaluation of the clinical case. The resident is expected to formulate three to four clinical questions using clinical practice guidelines and evidence based medicine to pose these questions to the residents for discussion. This activity is supervised by a faculty member.

In the second year of training, each resident, with a faculty mentor, presents and discusses a case at Medical Grand Rounds. The resident is also expected to prepare a case or abstract that is suitable for presentation at a regional or national meeting. Faculty members provide assistance and review all projects.

In the third year, each resident, with guidance from a faculty member, presents an extensive review of a topic of his/her choice at medical grand rounds.

Residents actively participate in submitting abstracts to regional and national scientific meetings. Recently, the residents have prepared 30 abstracts/posters/articles for submission with 18 accepted for presentation. At the national level, residents have presented posters at the American College of Gastroenterology, American College of Physicians, the annual ACGME meeting, the American Thoracic Society and the National Kidney Foundation. Regional presentations included oral and numerous poster presentations at the American College of Physician regional research meeting and an award-winning poster at the Pennsylvania Medical Society.

To support the research efforts of the residency programs, the hospital supports a Research Institute led by a full-time research director with doctorate training in clinical psychology and research. The director takes an active role in providing and instructing the residents in statistical analysis at our monthly Journal Club and in giving instruction on how to get started in research as part of our ACGME General Competency Lecture series. She is also very active in assisting the residents in developing and supporting original research and quality improvement projects.

The residents also enjoy the full services of an in-house media productions department that assists in poster preparation.

The annual St. Luke’s Residents’ Research Symposium is a forum for selected research projects from each of the hospital’s training programs to be presented in oral and poster format. Awards are given to top placed oral and poster presentations. It is an excellent opportunity to promote and recognize scholarly activity and to discuss the work being done by all the residency programs.

The Department of Medicine annually recognizes a resident’s exceptional commitment to scholarly activity by awarding the Michael E. Kimmel, MD, Research Award and honorarium at the annual residents’ graduation dinner.

Faculty involvement in scholarly activity is present in many forms. The faculty actively mentors all resident generated research. The faculty participates and presents at regional and national meetings, in large cooperative multi-centered studies, in publications in peer review journals, publication of book reviews and contributions to texts.