Curriculum & Schedule

Program Overview

The Wakefield Campus of Montefiore Medical Center provides inpatient and outpatient primary and consultative care for communities of the Bronx. In an academic environment, primary care training is offered in internal medicine and several of its subspecialties. The residency program in internal medicine is linked to a community rich in ethnic and socioeconomic diversity.

The philosophy of the training program is to present a highly organized and closely supervised education program. The guiding teaching methodology is the integration of didactic subject matter into the daily delivery of inpatient and ambulatory healthcare to patients. The program's goal is to produce high-quality graduates who will provide compassionate and humanistic care to patients in academic or private practice settings.

The Wakefield Campus is a center of academic excellence. As a teaching hospital, we have medical students from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine rotating through our medical floors, enhancing the residency experience. We have committed medicine subspecialty and general internal medicine faculty, who are interested in teaching and training enthusiastic, bright young physicians. We are especially proud of our Divisions of Gastroenterology and Geriatrics and their fellowship programs.

Curriculum

The three-year categorical residency is geared to provide a solid foundation in clinical, academic and social aspects of medicine. The Department of Medicine is dedicated to providing a comprehensive curriculum to all medicine residents. Our program includes an excellent clinical and academic experience, didactic lectures, sessions on evidence based medicine, performance improvement, risk management, end of life care, medical ethics, infection control, microbiology, pharmacology, morbidity and mortality conferences. A year-long Board Review course is offered to all PGY-3 residents. Scholarly activity and presentations are encouraged: our residents participate in national, regional and local academic meetings, as well as the Wakefield Annual Research Day, and all PGY-3 residents are expected to present at the Wakefield Grand Rounds.

A comprehensive didactic schedule enhances the educational program. Noon conferences on core topics occur daily. Morning reports tailored to the specific learning needs of interns and residents occur weekly. A robust orientation includes the Fundamental Critical Care Support course, developed by the Society of Critical Care Medicine. This ensures that all house staff will have adequate preparation to care for critically ill patients. All categorical residents participate in the Ambulatory Care Rotation, which includes core Primary Care topic lectures/workshops, Women's Health, Clinical Epidemiology and Psychosocial Medicine.

Yearly Schedules

Our program follows a traditional 4 week block schedule. All residents except for preliminary interns participate in continuity clinics at the Wakefield Ambulatory Care Center. All rotations (inpatient and outpatient) take place at the Wakefield Campus, with exceptions for Oncology and Cardiology as noted below. During the inpatient rotations, each day team is paired with a night team and teaching rounds take place with both teams present, to ensure robust teaching for the night teams and enhance continuity of care.

View the sample conference schedule here.

View the sample annual schedule here.

Preliminary Track

The preliminary program provides a well-rounded internal medicine foundation for future specialty training. The curriculum is identical to the categorical intern curriculum with the exception of additional elective time and no continuity clinic. For further details, please refer to Categorical curriculum.

Evaluations

This is a continuous process. Residents are evaluated by faculty, peers and other members of the health care team (e.g. Nursing) through direct evaluation and online evaluations. Evaluations are completed online through New Innovations (www.new-innov.com) at the end of each rotation. All residents take the ACP-In Training examination at least twice during their training. Each resident meets with an Associate Program Director twice a year to review progress, goals and areas for improvement.