Our residency curriculum is built on four-week blocks with 13 blocks each year. The base rotations of inpatient, obstetric, and CORE (clinic) are spread across the three years to provide exposure to all settings throughout training as well as the opportunity for growth and development of supervision skills. Our required pediatric rotations include a hospitalist and emergency medicine rotation with the pediatric department and outpatient rotations with community pediatricians. Other required rotations include ICU, nephrology and dermatology. We continue to have two blocks of both emergency medicine and sports medicine throughout your training. We are continuing to grow our elective options utilizing our partnerships throughout the city to help you optimize your development and reach your professional goals. Other longitudinal curricular aspects include behavioral health, educational seminar series, procedures, and specialty tracks.
Curriculum by Year
PGY 1 Curriculum |
|
| Adult Inpatient Days – 8 weeks | Inpatient Newborn – 4 weeks |
| Adult Inpatient Night Float – two 2-week blocks | Emergency Medicine – 4 weeks |
| Obstetrics – 8 weeks | CORE (Outpatient Medicine) – 8 weeks |
| General Surgery – 4 weeks | Sports Medicine – 4 weeks |
| Nephrology – 4 weeks | Dermatology – 4 weeks |
| Inpatient Pediatrics – 4 weeks | |
PGY 2 Curriculum |
|
| Adult Inpatient Days – 8 weeks | CORE (Outpatient Medicine) – 6 weeks |
| Adult Inpatient Night Float – one 2-week blocks | Geriatrics – 4 weeks |
| Obstetrics Nights – two 2-week blocks | Women's Health/Gynecology – 4 weeks |
| Intensive Care – 4 weeks | Pain Management – 4 weeks |
| Pediatric Emergency Medicine – 4 weeks | Electives – 4 weeks |
| Outpatient Pediatrics – 4 weeks | |
PGY 3 Curriculum |
|
| Adult Inpatient Days – 8 weeks | CORE (Outpatient Medicine) – 10 weeks |
| Adult Inpatient Night Float – one 2-week blocks | Sports Medicine – 4 weeks |
| Outpatient Pediatrics – 4 weeks | Electives – 20 weeks |
| Emergency Medicine – 4 weeks |
Required Rotations
Longitudinal Clinic Experience
The ability to develop long-term relationships with your patients, improves patient satisfaction, and is one of the most rewarding aspects of practicing family medicine. As part of every block schedule, residents are scheduled for at least one half-day per week caring for patients on their panel in the residency clinic. The amount of time assigned to seeing patients in the continuity clinic increases gradually across the years of training. In addition to their weekly continuity clinic experience, there are six CORE blocks where residents are immersed in the outpatient clinical environment learning everything they will need to be successful clinicians after graduation.
CORE Rotation
Due to the complexity of the U.S. health care system, the skills of the family physician extend beyond direct patient encounters to provide timely, cost-effective care. The longitudinal CORE curriculum is designed to introduce and develop the skills required of family physicians to provide care in this complex environment while keeping up with increasing patient care demands.
Throughout the six months of the CORE curriculum, residents will participate in a variety of activities including direct patient observations, volunteering experiences, structured didactics and self-directed learning. Residents will graduate with a comprehensive understanding of varied payment models, HCC coding, care coordination, quality metrics in primary care, navigating complex and challenging patient encounters, and incorporating procedures into routine clinical practice.
Adult Inpatient Medicine
The family medicine inpatient service cares for patients at IU Health Methodist Hospital in downtown Indianapolis. This level 1 trauma center allows our residents to meet the health care needs of a high disease-burden patient population. Our inpatient service consists of two teams, each with a PGY 3, PGY 2, and PGY1 supervised by a family medicine attending physician. Our inpatient teams are designed to optimize continuity of care, allowing residents to follow patients from admission to discharge. Residents will continue to spend one half-day each week seeing patients in the outpatient clinic, providing further opportunity for continuity of care. As part of the longitudinal block schedule residents are scheduled for two-week night float blocks which have allowed us to eliminate the need for 24 hour shifts as well as post call rounding.
Obstetrics
The family medicine obstetric service cares for pregnant patients at the IU Health Riley Maternity Hospital. Residents will be exposed to high risk and operative obstetrics while working with family medicine attending physicians. On nights and weekends our residents get the opportunity to work with ob-gyn residents and attendings while remaining the primary resident caring for patients on our service. In addition to a once weekly continuity clinic, residents will also spend a half day each week caring for patients in our prenatal care clinic.
Longitudinal Behavioral Science Curriculum
The behavioral science curriculum spans all three years of residency training and has been integrated into the CORE blocks. The curricular content of behavioral science as part of the Family Medicine Residency includes healthy behavioral, cognitive, emotional and relational functioning. This includes human behavior change, emotion regulation in families, family development and lifecycle transitions and preventative medicine as well as interpersonal and communication skills. For family physicians, this includes motivational interviewing, boundary setting with difficult patients and managing drug-seeking patients.
Residents learn how to manage mental and behavioral health problems, including relational problems and psychopharmacology for the individual patient, and develop professionalism skills, which covers issues of diversity in practice, maintaining a patient-centered approach and compassion as well as managing fatigue and burnout.
Educational Seminar Series
The Family Medicine Residency program holds a weekly educational seminar series (didactics) for faculty and residents to engage in current topics relevant to family medicine. These sessions occur weekly on Wednesday afternoons at the residency clinic with lunch provided. Topics span the breadth of family medicine including adult medicine and chronic disease, behavioral science, coding/compliance, evidence-based medicine, geriatrics, gynecology, obstetrics, pediatrics, pharmacy, practice management and sports medicine. The curriculum is built on an 18-month cycle, allowing residents the opportunity to engage with each topic twice during their training.
Each afternoon is generally broken down into three one-hour sessions. One hour each week is reserved so that there is a grand rounds, journal club, resident wellness session and chief meeting each block. The remaining two hours address the core topics related to family medicine. These often include case based-activities, small group discussions, jeopardy style review games, hands on activities, in addition to traditional lectures. Longer workshops are also offered, with topics including minor office and dermatologic procedures, family violence, developmental pediatrics, common obstetric and pediatric procedures.