Our curriculum is extremely diverse and includes many different educational opportunities. Please take a moment to learn more about our educational curriculum.

Acute Care Conference Series
Lectures are Monday-Friday at 12:30 p.m. from July to mid-August. The series includes core topics relevant to new intern/upper level working on an inpatient service. View the July 2007 schedule!

• Topics include Fluids and Electrolytes, Drug/Alcohol Withdrawal syndromes, Tachyarrhythmias, GI Bleeds, and Antibiotics, among many others.
• The lecture series culminates with a five day seminar on EKG's - basics through arrhythmias.
• Lectures are attended by IM residents and medical students as well as faculty and residents from Family Practice and Emergency Medicine.

Noon Conferences
After the Acute Care curriculum ends, the regular conference schedule begins. Lectures are held daily at 12:30 p.m. Topics vary from General Medicine to Cardiology and Rheumatology.

Tuesdays are specifically devoted to ambulatory curriculum. Topics include common general medicine outpatient complaints such as ENT, Ophthalmologic and Dermatologic issues.

Lunch is provided daily free of charge. The overall topics are relevant to Internal Medicine's RRC requirements, the Inservice Exam, and the ABIM shelf exam as well as every day practice.

Rounds
Our full time faculty is made up exclusively of clinician-educators; their primary focus is teaching Internal Medicine residents and medical students in the inpatient and outpatient settings. Inpatient service teams typically meet with their attending daily and easily supercede the required four hours of teaching per week.

Departmental Conferences
Each subspecialty division will offer its own individual weekly or monthly conferences. Examples include the weekly Tumor conference, combined Medical-Surgical GI conference, Pulmonary conference, Infectious Disease, and Microbiology Rounds. Individual specialties do a great deal of teaching during consult services as well as formal lectures.

Outpatient Education
There are always two attending staff present in the outpatient clinic, and a great deal of precepting occurs there. The number of residents in the outpatient clinic ranges from 1-6, but never exceeds six. As there are always two attending staff, our faculty-resident ratio is never more than 1:3, and is often 1:2. This allows more time for teaching; in addition, each patient is discussed with an attending. Further, attending staff will see and examine each intern's patients for a minimum of the first 6 months.

Grand Rounds
Our Medical Grand Rounds are held every Tuesday. Presentations are given by Carolinas Medical Center faculty, as well as by visiting professors from UNC-Chapel Hill and other institutions. All PGY-3 residents will present at Medical Grand Rounds. In addition to our monthly speakers from UNC-Chapel Hill, we also have a variety of special outside speakers that are part of our Grand Rounds curriculum. The 2007-2008 Grand Rounds schedule has included many prestigious speakers, including:

• Richard W. Light, M.D., Vanderbilt University, founder of "Light’s Criteria" for classifying pleural effusions
• Gerald Appel, M.D., Columbia University, Chairman of the Glomerular and Nephritis Council of the National Kidney Foundation
• Paul L. Marino, M.D., The Miriam Hospital, Providence, R.I., Author of "The ICU Book"

Journal Club and Morbidity & Mortality Conference
Journal Club is held monthly and is led by a PGY-2 resident. A recent article is presented and dissected, with a complete review of the pertinent literature. There is an introductory forum to introduce housestaff to analyzing the medical literature.

Morbidity and Mortality Conference is held monthly in the auditorium. The format is essentially a CPC style presentation (similar to the New England Journal cases). We include guest faculty unfamiliar with the case for on-the-spot commentary. This is one of the residents' favorite conferences.

Morning Report
Morning Report is held daily excluding Tuesdays due to Grand Rounds. Our Report is open to medical students, interns, residents and faculty - we encourage all to attend. There is an evidence based case presentation and discussion with focus on defining the skills of differential diagnosis.

There is an INTERN ONLY Morning Report from July-October on Thursday mornings. Held with just the chief resident and program director, there is a strong emphasis on differential diagnosis and getting comfortable with public speaking!

Symposia
Our symposia are 4-hour workshops on topics crucial to Internal Medicine that are difficult to review in a 1 hour forum. Continuity clinics are cancelled so that all residents/ faculty may attend. Recent topics included Orthopaedics, Sports Medicine, Perioperative Evaluation/Care, Alternative Medicine, Gynecology Review, Health Maintenance and Prevention and Palliative Care Medicine.

In 2006, we had a 2 day Procedure workshop for the very first time. The Department of Internal Medicine purchased multiple simulator models for different procedures for resident education. With the help of our experienced faculty, we did model instruction and reviewed proper algorithms for the following procedures: Arterial Line placement, Arthrocentesis of the shoulder, Central Line placement [subclavian and internal jugular vein], Lumbar Puncture, Thoracentesis, and Use of Ultrasound as an adjunct when performing vascular procedures.

This workshop was repeated for our intern class in July 2007, and has been rated extraordinarily highly by our residents. We plan to make it an annual workshop.

We have also begun an annual workshop for our PGY2 residents titled "The Resident as Teacher." It explores a variety of topics, including education of interns and medical students, how to provide feedback, and how to assume the role of "Team Leader." It has been very positively reviewed by our current residents.

In-Training Exam in Internal Medicine
In our program, residents will take the In-Training Exam in Internal Medicine each year that they are in the program. We have found that sitting for the exam annually assists our residents greatly with time management and other skills critical to navigating the ABIM exam!

Board Review
Our faculty also put on an Internal Medicine Board Review every year. In general, it consists of 2 sessions per month [approximately 3 hours in length] from September through May. These sessions are held from 5:30 - 8:30 p.m. and dinner is served as well. Both our General Medicine and Subspecialty Division leaders are involved with and put a tremendous amount of effort into these reviews. For this reason, they are well attended by not only PGY3 residents, but PGY2's and interns as well!

American Board of Internal Medicine Exam [ABIM]
Our educational approach has been extremely successful and has resulted in outstanding ABIM pass rates.

• From 1996-2006, our pass rate is over 99%
• During this time period, 110 of 111 residents in the program successfully passed the exam on the first attempt
• Over the last 30 years, our ABIM pass rate is >97%