Structured Program of Didactic Conferences

The core of the learning experience in the Transitional Year Residency program is to combine supervised “hands-on” patient care experience with structured interactive didactic educational sessions, web-based learning and simulation.

In the Department of Medicine, one to one-and-a-half hours daily are devoted to the program's didactic conferences, including a weekly medical grand rounds, noon report, daily subspecialty conferences, weekly board review, monthly morbidity and mortality review, monthly evidenced-based medicine/journal club and critical care conferences. A detailed explanation of these conferences can be found on our web site under Internal Medicine Residency Conferences.

In the Departments of Emergency Medicine, Family Practice, Obstetrics and Gynecology and General Surgery, the didactic programs are organized into weekly half day education sessions. The education day sessions include a structured curriculum of core conferences for that discipline, journal club, morbidity and mortality review, board review, grand rounds, tumor board and practice management sessions.

In pediatrics, a daily patient-focused conference is given and educational conferences are integrated into the education day of the family medicine and emergency medicine residencies. Pediatric Grand Rounds and Mortality and Morbidity conferences are held monthly.

All residents in the hospital participate in the monthly ACGME Core Competencies Lecture Series. This two-hour monthly series covers topics such as medical law, patient safety, cultural diversity, ethical and profession-specific issues. Presenters include community and business leaders, attorneys, hospital staff with special expertise and faculty.

Procedural Workshop

During our new resident orientation, the critical care faculty conducts a simulation procedural workshop involving a review of the indications, contraindications, equipment, complications and anatomy related to performing: chest tube insertion, central line placement, intubation, nasogastric tube insertion, urethral catheterization, peripheral line insertion, cardioversion/defibrillation, transthoracic pacing and needle decompression.