Where Residents Spend Their Time

Medicine Wards Medical ICU Coronary Care Unit Electives/ Subspecialty consults* ER blocks Months without call PGY1 5 1 0 5 1 4-5 PGY2 3 1½ 1 6½ 0 6½ PGY3 3 1 1 7 0 7

Emergency Department
Interns will have the opportunity to work with faculty and residents in the Department of Emergency Medicine, which has a strong national reputation for excellence. They will work under the supervision of a board-certified Emergency Medicine attending and will spend one month in the ED, seeing adults with major and minor emergencies. There will be ample opportunities for a variety of minor procedures, including suturing and incision and drainage, as well as more invasive procedures. During the month, interns work 20 ten-hour shifts.

Coronary Care Unit (CCU)
Second- and third-year residents are each assigned to one-month rotations on this 20-bed unit, also known as the Dickson Heart Unit, or DHU. They assist private cardiologists in the care of patients. Residents are also part of the CODE STEMI team; which is the early response team for ST-Elevation Myocardial Infarctions. Residents will have the opportunity to hear about these patients en route, see them come into the ER, and follow them through the cardiac catheterization lab to the CCU. Residents will also be part of the CODE BLUE team and assist with responding to all cardiac arrests in the hospital. CCU call is every third night. A board-certified faculty cardiologist is assigned full-time to the CCU for teaching purposes.

Medical Intensive Care Unit (MICU)
The ICU is a 30-bed unit supervised by full-time faculty; all are certified in pulmonology and critical care. A formal lecture curriculum also exists with lectures a minimum of three times a week. The curriculum always includes an introduction to ventilators, reviews of critical articles on the management of sepsis, and instruction on placement of invasive procedures. We own our own Site-Rite™ machine, so we can use this for line placement without needing to involve the radiology department. First, second and third-year residents assigned to one-month ICU rotations assist in the care of both private and staff patients. Call is every third night for the resident and usually works out to be every fourth to every fifth night for the interns. A doctor of pharmacology and a registered critical care dietician are part of the ICU team. As of September 2007, there are critical care attendings that are in-house 24 hours a day for assistance with critically ill patients.

A large expansion is currently underway at Carolinas Medical Center that includes the construction of an "ICU Tower". This will include a brand new, state of the art 30 bed Medical Intensive Care Unit facility for the care of our patients. The ICU tower is scheduled to open in December 2007.