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The Internal Medicine Residency Program at Mount Sinai Medical Center is committed to excellence in the training and education of physicians for the practice of primary care, general internal medicine and its subspecialties. Upon completion of Mount Sinai's three-year program, residents are ready to enter the practice of general internal medicine or to begin a subspecialty fellowship with confidence.
Teaching Philosophy
At Mount Sinai Medical Center, we stress the physician's primary obligation to patient care and patient advocacy. Residents accept progressive responsibility in an environment which provides adequate supervision and support.
Our program maintains an atmosphere that is supportive and conducive to learning, ensuring that each resident has the opportunity to develop the skills to achieve his or her individual career goals. Residents are expected to take an active role in planning their schedules so that their individual needs and interests are met.
We provide a system of learning and training that has an appropriate balance between service and education. A reasonable work load and excellent ancillary support services in the hospital ensure that residents have the opportunity to regularly attend formal learning activities. This commitment to didactic instruction is reflected in our excellent over ABIM examination pass rate of 97% for the most recent four years.
Program Curriculum
The curriculum ensures exposure to a wide range of medical problems including a blend of inpatient and outpatient general internal medicine, intensive care medicine, traditional internal medicine subspecialties, inpatient medical consultation, and selected non-internal medicine specialties deemed relevant to an internist's education.
The didactic curriculum includes a plethora of lectures and workshops, including morning report, daily noon lectures by attending faculty or invited speakers, weekly Department of Medicine grand rounds, morbidity and mortality conferences, and numerous presentations by house staff interspersed throughout the year. A formal clinical research curriculum was implemented in early 2009 which enables each resident to have opportunities for research and publication experience.
Offsite electives may be arranged as needed to complement the resident's training and enhance career planning, on a case by case basis and subject to liability insurance limitations.
Ambulatory Experience
Residents provide outpatient care in Mount Sinai's Primary Care Center, a newly remodeled facility. Here categorical residents follow their own panel of outpatients throughout their three years of training. Dovetailed with this is a continuity experience in a private internist's office to ensure that residents have exposure to a broad variety of patients and the practical business aspects of medicine. All ambulatory experiences are supervised by on-site attending staff.
Preliminary residents who request to do so have the opportunity to arrange a clinic in their fields of interest.
The Chief Residents
Each year the Department of Medicine selects two house officers to serve as fourth year Chief Residents. The Chief Residents serve as junior faculty members, play an integral role in the planning and administration of the program, and are an additional source of support and guidance for house staff.
The Residency Management Team
The Residency Management Team (RMT) meets weekly to address all aspects of the program. Members include the Chair of the Department of Medicine, the Program Director, the Associate Program Director, the Chief of Infectious Disease, the Chief Residents, the Department of Medicine Coordinator, and the Program Coordinator. Any active problems or issues are discussed, and plans for resolution and/or implementation are developed. A Clinical Competency Committee composed of select faculty members meets monthly to review the progress of House Staff and to identify any resident performance issues or unmet needs.
Weekly Resident Meetings
The Program Director, Associate Program Director, and Chief Residents meet weekly with all teams on ward duty to discuss systems issues and any concerns about the training program. Free discussion is encouraged, plans of action to resolve problems are developed, and follow-up is given. This involvement by house staff is considered essential to the success of the program and is an important part of the performance improvement process for the hospital. Additionally, program leadership maintains an "open door policy" at all times, welcoming impromptu meetings with individual residents to discuss any concerns in a congenial, non-threatening atmosphere.
Career Guidance
A priority in our program is to assist residents in choosing the careers they are best suited for and in which they will be happy. Flexibility in elective scheduling permits residents to gain exposure to subspecialties of potential interest as early as the PGY-1 term. Program leadership makes every effort to help residents with the pursuit of their career goals, directing them towards appropriate faculty members to serve as mentors and fellowship advocates. The private internist with whom the resident has the alternate site clinic assignment serves a dual role as the resident's mentor. Mentors may be reassigned as needed as the resident's interests evolve during the course of training.
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