Program Details
Our Central Educational Goals
- Prepare highly qualified internists who will excel in their chosen career
- Promote compassionate and effective gathering of clinical information from patients and their families
- Instill enthusiasm for lifelong learning
- Teach ways to find, appraise, and apply new scientific knowledge
- Provide early, positive experiences in ambulatory general medicine, inpatient general medicine, subspecialty medicine, and scholarship
- Develop individualized educational plans based on each resident's evolving career objectives
Achieving The Goals
Because we believe residents learn best through direct responsibility in the care of patients, the central educational experience of our residency is the individual patient encounter. Our residents:
- Interview and examine patients in a wide variety of clinical settings
- Define each patient's clinical problems and health care needs
- Develop plans for diagnosis and management
Each patient encounter is mentored by at least one faculty member and, for PGY1s, by a more senior resident as well. We pay attention to the patient's illness, but also to the psychological and social context in which that illness occurs. After seeing patients, residents and faculty members work together to:
- Define knowledge gaps
- Fill knowledge gaps with the best available evidence from basic or clinical research
- Make patient care decisions based on science and on the knowledge gained from a pattern of lifelong, patient-centered learning
The individual patient is the focus of our rounds and conferences, which often take place at the patient's bedside—a hallmark of a Rochester residency. We create an environment unencumbered by hierarchy, and we promote and expect participation of all learners in an academically rigorous discussion.
