The one-year Internal Medicine Preliminary Residency offers the same level of autonomy for patient care and the same clinical teaching given to categorical residents. An enhanced curriculum in gastroenterology, hematology and cardiology is provided to preliminary residents (interns) to ensure broad coverage of the major subspecialties of internal medicine within the single year of the preliminary program.
For all services at Mayo Clinic, there are no private patients or private attendings. All patients are cared for by intern-resident teams and a single attending physician.
This is a typical rotation schedule for a preliminary medicine intern:
|Emergency medicine, along with float and vacation
|Hematology (no call)
|Gastroenterology (no call)
|Non-internal medicine elective, along with float and vacation
Over the three years of categorical residency, more than 800 didactic lectures are presented to internal medicine residents. The didactic portion of Mayo Clinic's Internal Medicine Residency includes:
- Core curriculum conferences
- Morbidity and mortality conferences
- Primary care conferences
- Grand Rounds
- Clinical Decision-Making Journal Club
- Board review
- Systems-based practice and quality improvement conferences
- Morning report (inpatient and outpatient)
- Evidence-based medicine didactic conferences
A comprehensive didactic core curriculum addresses both inpatient and outpatient medicine. During PGY-1, the weekly core curriculum covers basic topics in internal medicine. These general core lectures are supplemented by a lecture series in each subspecialty service. Food is provided for residents, and conferences are telecast to multiple locations throughout Mayo Clinic so that residents can attend regardless of rotation or assignment.
In addition, more than 150 institutional clinical and research conferences are held each week.
Faculty members teach basic interviewing and physical examination skills to residents during the first year of residency using standardized patients and teaching videos. Residents also learn in-depth clinical skills as part of each specialty curriculum. Workshops in procedural skills are provided during orientation as well as during specialty and ICU rotations.
There are no research requirements and expectations for this one-year residency. However, all the resources of our well-developed resident scholarship program are available to the preliminary interns just as they are to the categorical interns, including sponsored travel to present scholarly work at national society meetings.
Historically, about one-third of preliminary interns publish or present their research in a peer-reviewed forum before the end of their internship year.
Interns in this program are restricted to the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education's 16-hour duty limitation.
Residents have the opportunity to teach Mayo medical students as well as visiting medical students.
To ensure you gain proficiency and develop the corresponding technical skills, your performance is monitored throughout the Internal Medicine Preliminary Residency. You are formally evaluated by your supervising faculty member after completing each clinical rotation and meet with an associate program director to review these evaluations.
In addition, you regularly evaluate the faculty to ensure your educational goals are being met.