Curriculum

The general principles overriding the residency program are:

1. Education comes first
2. Residency should be an enjoyable experience.

The program is driven by education – not by service needs – for all of its residents (12 traditional categorical internal medicine per year, and four preliminary interns). The foundation of the program, which is fully accredited with the ACGME, is its written curriculum, a document that provides the specific educational goals for each of the rotations in internal medicine in each year of training.

The strength of our program resides in the spectrum of patients and the diversity of the attending physicians with whom our residents work. The exposure to community-based, voluntary attending physicians in both general medicine and subspecialties complements exposure to the full-time faculty. Unlike the prototypical university urban medical center in which the overwhelming majority of patients are admitted from the immediate surrounding community, the patient population cared for by our residents represents a balanced mixture of patients.
Our program also offers the house staff the resources of seven on-site, fully accredited sub-specialty training programs. These include fellowships in Cardiology, Nephrology, Hematology-Oncology, Pulmonary-Critical Care, Infectious Diseases, Interventional Cardiology, Cardiac Electrophysiology, and Heart Failure. Fellows in these seven subspecialty areas interact with residents rotating through their respective consultation services, the Intensive Care Unit, the Coronary Care Unit, and the Oncology service. In addition, fellows actively participate in teaching and supervision of house staff on both an inpatient and outpatient basis, and facilitate house staff participation in research activities within their subspecialty divisions.

During the first two years, residents spend the bulk of their inpatient time rotating through the general medical floor and select subspecialty floor rotations. The first two years are also supplemented with experiences in ICU, CCU, Emergency Department, and certain subspecialties. A teaching attending physician is assigned to each inpatient team, supervising housestaff in the care of all teaching patients and conducting daily teaching rounds.

On Sunday through Friday nights, a night float team admits patients to the teaching services from 8 p.m. to 7 a.m. These night admissions are presented at Morning Report and assigned to the floor teams. This system permits us to control the flow of admissions and ensures that the education of the resident remains the priority of the program. Caps are established for admissions per day and total census for each PGY 1 and PGY 2 resident according to ACGME guidelines and these caps are enforced strictly. Weekend coverage is provided with a split shift by the floor team members from Saturday morning through Sunday evening, ensuring adherence with ACGME duty-hour regulations.

A sample rotation schedule is provided in the Curriculum section.

Our residency is configured as a 2+6 residency which means that for every six weeks of inpatient rotations the residents spend two weeks on an ambulatory rotation that includes general medicine clinic as well as subspecialty clinics. Ambulatory experiences are integral to the education of our residents. In addition to the regularly scheduled two week ambulatory rotations, the residents are expected to spend approximately 50% of their second and third year subspecialty rotations in the ambulatory setting. These blocks permit rotation through clinics in both medical and non-medical specialties, as well as exposure to off-site private and community-based practices.

The PGY 2 and 3 years include rotations through all the specialties of internal medicine. The residents thus develop skills through consultation service and specialty outpatient experiences.

We recognize the importance of certain administrative and non-medical education throughout the residency. Formal education in medical ethics, medical economics, utilization management, quality assurance, legal aspects of medicine, and performance improvement is provided throughout the residency.

Nearly all core rotations in our program take place at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center. We are proud of the friendly, intimate atmosphere which we can offer. We also pay careful attention to the human aspects of residency training by providing a favorable call schedule, meals while on call, and comfortable, convenient sleeping quarters with a modern, well-equipped lounge.

Rotation Overview

INTERNS

Rotation	Categorical	Preliminary
Medicine Floors	12 weeks 2 weeks ER	12 weeks
Ambulatory	14 weeks	14 weeks
Night Float	4 weeks	4 weeks
Night Medicine	2 weeks	2 weeks
ICU	8 weeks	8 weeks
Elective	4 weeks	6 weeks
Cardiology Consult	2 weeks	2 weeks
Vacation	4 weeks	4 weeks

PGY-2's:

Rotation
Medicine floors	4 weeks
Ambulatory	12 weeks
Night Float	4 weeks
ICU	8 weeks
CCU	4 weeks
Infectious Diseases	2 weeks
Endocrinology	2 weeks
Hem-Onc	4 weeks
Geriatrics	2 weeks
Elective/Selective	4 weeks
ER	2 weeks
Vacation	4 weeks

PGY-3's:

Rotation
Elective	4 weeks
General Med floors	4 weeks
Medical Officer of Day	4 week days 4 week nights
ICU	4 weeks
Rheumatology	4 weeks
Ambulatory	10 weeks
Neurology consults	2 weeks
GI consults	2 weeks
Pulmonary consults	2 weeks
Renal consults	2 weeks
Hematology	2 weeks
Cardiology	4 weeks
Vacation	4 weeks

Call Schedule Summary:

Floor months: During all NBIMC floor months residents work "long shifts" depending on their rotation. These shifts are until 8:00 pm, with Night Float relieving floor teams at 8:00 pm.

ICU: All Critical Care rotations now incorporate a rotating Night Shift schedule, whereby residents spend one week per month working nights, and three weeks working days. During their Night Shift week residents work from 8:00 PM through morning rounds the next day, thus ensuring that they leave by 10:00 AM.

Night Float: The Night Float team consists of one intern and one PGY-2 who work as a team Sunday through Friday nights from 8:00 pm till 7:00 am. In addition, one intern will be on the Night Medicine Rotation under the direct supervision of an in-house hospitalist. They are relieved after Morning Report at 8:30 am each day.

MOD call: The weekday MOD responsibilities are divided between a Day-MOD, who works from 8:00 am to 8:00 pm, and a Night-MOD, who works from 8:00 pm to 8:00 am Monday through Friday. Saturday and Sunday MOD responsibilities are covered by PGY-3's on Subspecialty Services other than Pulmonary. Generally each PGY-3 on Consults does one weekend of days and one weekend of nights during each of their consult months.