Internal Medicine-Pediatrics Residency Program Ranked #1 in Providing Best Clinical Training
When more than 35,000 board-certified physicians across the country were asked which Medical-Pediatrics residency program provides the best clinical training, their leading choice was the University of Rochester Medical Center’s combined Internal Medicine-Pediatrics program.
In rankings recently released by Doximity—the nation’s largest online professional network for U.S. physicians, and a partner of U.S. News & World Report—URMC’s Internal Medicine-Pediatrics program was ranked number one in reputation among similar programs. The achievement is especially meaningful given that the program was one of the first of its kind to be developed more than 50 years ago. The four-year program provides integrated, rigorous training in both Medicine and Pediatrics, while remaining flexible enough to help residents pursue individual career paths. It offers a balance of clinical experiences in acute and outpatient settings, primary and specialty care.
“We are honored to be selected first among the nation’s top Internal Medicine-Pediatrics residency programs,” said program director Brett Robbins, M.D.,associate professor in the Departments of Medicine and Pediatrics. “Over the years, we’ve gratefully had fertile ground on which to grow, including a large and engaged graduate education community and strong support from the medical school and Medical Center. We’ve also had and an exceptional learning environment provided by the Internal Medicine and Pediatrics residency programs, and URMC Primary Care which houses the Culver Medical Group. This is truly the result of a sustained team effort of faculty and residents.”
While U.S. News has annually evaluated and ranked hospitals and medical schools for decades, Doximity began its annual survey of residency programs in 2014 as the first major effort to gauge practicing doctors’ views about this critical, formative component of medical training. The results are incorporated in Doximity’s Residency Navigator, an online tool to help medical students make informed decisions about where to pursue their residencies. The tool also aims to improve the transparency of the National Residency Matching Program.
Residency programs—which can take as long as seven years to complete depending on chosen specialty—allow medical school graduates to perform as licensed practitioners under the supervision of experienced preceptors. In addition to the reputation rankings, the Residency Navigator gives prospective residents valuable information on resident satisfaction, top subspecialties, research output, board pass rates, feeder medical schools, and alumni.
Director of UR Medicine Primary Care Wallace E. Johnson, M.D., says a large number of Internal Medicine-Pediatrics residents choose to stay in Rochester after completing the program, which over the years has created a strong pipeline of local primary care physicians, and built a vast local and regional alumni base for career education, advice and counseling. For example, of the program’s 38 graduates between 2012 and 2016—20 of them now practice in the Rochester area.
“This impressive recognition really speaks to the tangible impact a high quality residency program has on our community,” said Johnson, who also serves as the associate chair for Primary Care within URMC’s Department of Medicine.
Fourth-year Internal Medicine-Pediatrics resident Charity Oyedeji, M.D., said that when she was interviewing for residencies, she and other students were well aware that the program was a pioneer in its integrated model, and that it had a reputation for providing both flexibility and a supportive environment.
“On my interview day, I met with Dr. Robbins, and told him about my many interests involving community advocacy, global health and sickle cell disease, and he told me all of those endeavors could be accommodated through the available tracks,” said Oyedeji, a native of Houston, Texas. “Happily, that turned out to be true. Not only me, but other residents I know have had the opportunity to do amazing things here in our community and abroad. I feel well-prepared now to pursue a career as a specialist caring for patients with sickle cell disease from pediatrics through adulthood.”
To compile Doximity’s reputation data, peer nominations were collected across 23 specialties during the month of June, 2016. Design for the survey was modeled, with permission, on the annual physician survey which is a component of U.S. News’ Best Hospitals rankings. U.S. News editors also gave informal input into the design of the survey. Every nominating physician was board-certified, and was asked to name up to five programs they believed offer the best clinical training, without consideration to geography. To account for “self-votes,” raw votes were divided into alumni votes and non-alumni votes, and weighted according to the percentage of the eligible physician population that a particular program accounts for within that specialty.