Residency is about growth. As a result, we designed our program to help you become the very best clinician, leader, and life-long learner you can be. We firmly believe we are training you to be a world class emergency physician in order to practice EM in any environment. Whether your goal is to practice in a world-class ivory tower academic center, a small single-coverage community department, or an under-resourced international setting, we aim to prepare you for it all. To do this we are mindful about finding ways to challenge you at each step of your residency through a graduated responsibility curriculum.
Rotation Distribution
R1 Year
Our first year kicks off with orientation to help prepare you for the rigors of clinical EM and remind you what it’s like to see patients again (yes…we keep tabs on #4thyearmedschool). Much of the first year is focused on building approaches to the common chief complaints in the ED. We create an extra hour of teaching time each week for our early interns in the form of “Intern Report” where we spend time building differential diagnoses (because if it’s not on your differential, you’ll never make the diagnosis), practicing procedures, and discussing some of the literature at the foundation of our clinical practice. Each off-service rotation is crafted to help build the foundation for skill sets that are essential to the practice of EM.
R2 Year
Second year is about going beyond the basic work-up and evaluation of patients to better understand the diversity and underlying pathology of patient presentations in the ED. The majority of time is spent in the ED honing the “sick versus not sick” gestalt. Residents begin longitudinal resuscitation/ultrasound shifts to further build and refine our skills as diagnosticians and resuscitationists. It is vital to understand how initial management decisions influence the downstream course for patients, especially the critically ill. Therefore, the off-service rotations this year are solely focused on subspecialized ICU-level care. Our first (of two) elective blocks are offered this year to help explore the myriad of career paths available after residency and begin to develop a niche.
R3 Year
The final year of our residency program is about moving toward autonomous practice as you lead the department in your oversight of the highest acuity pod in our ED. As a third year you serve as leader of both medical and trauma resuscitations in the department. You are challenged to balance patient volume while providing the highest quality care. To promote autonomous practice, our residents spend time in a rural single coverage emergency department in our system. Leadership of health care teams is essential in EM today; in order to grow those skills, we have a dedicated supervisory rotation where residents learn to oversee other providers in caring for patients. Our second month of elective enables further professional development and career planning.