Internal Medicine Residency Program
Clinical Activities
Internal Medicine residents acquire patient care experience by rotating through inpatient and outpatient medical services and by acting as consultants on subspecialty services. Residents receive clinical training through bedside teaching, small group discussions and daily conferences. Ongoing supervision, feedback and evaluation come from full-time faculty, practicing physicians, Program Directors, fellows, residents and Chief Residents.
Inpatient Care
Categorical and Preliminary first-year residents have similar rotation schedules. They spend the majority of their time on inpatient services and have primary responsibility for a wide range of patients on general medicine, critical care, cardiology and subspecialty services.
Inpatient teams usually consist of two R-1s, an R-2 or R-3, and a teaching attending. Teams frequently have third year Dartmouth clerks and/or visiting students from UCSF or numerous other American medical schools. The house staff assumes responsibility for most medical inpatients.
Interns do not work shifts longer than 16 hours in length. Though it was not mandated by ACGME, senior residents rarely work stretches longer than 16 hours.
Consultative and Subspecialty Medicine
Consultative skills are essential for the practicing internist. Our Internal Medicine program affords excellent inpatient and outpatient consultative opportunities.
We offer a wide range of subspecialty electives. When a desired subspecialty rotation is not available at California Pacific, residents may elect to do rotations at UCSF, Alameda County Medical Center (Highland Hospital), Stanford University, other Bay Area hospitals or at community-based clinics.
Outpatient Care
Ambulatory Care Clinic
A weekly outpatient clinic in the Family Health Center is assigned to residents in the three-year Categorical program. Residents serve as their patients' primary care physician throughout the three years of training.
Second and third year residents are required to do one month/year purely devoted to ambulatory medicine and categorical interns do 2 weeks. During this time, they practice general medicine and develop competence in a variety of primary care skills including orthopedics, otolaryngology, geriatrics, HIV medicine, rheumatology, allergy, podiatry, travel medicine, etc. Including outpatient-based electives and clinic time during inpatient electives, approximately 33 percent of a resident's time is devoted to ambulatory care. Residents with a particular interest in primary care can use their six to eight months of elective time, their weekly continuity clinic, and scheduled rotations in ambulatory medicine to create an internal medicine three-year experience that is almost 40 percent ambulatory.
In addition to learning clinical outpatient medicine, residents also participate in seminars (during OPD) on Evidence-Based Medicine and Patient Communication taught by CPMC faculty.
Emergency Medicine
A one-month rotation in Emergency Medicine at San Francisco General Hospital is required of all R-I Categorical residents. Additional ER rotations can be done during elective months at San Francisco General or Alameda County (Highland) Hospitals.
