With the help of our residents, we have created a unique curriculum. During your PGY1 year, you will spend three months in Neurology. In June, there is Brain Camp where we prepare you through lectures and simulation labs to care for patients with neurological emergencies, including stroke, status epilepticus and infectious diseases. By the end of Brain Camp, you will be ready to take call as a neurology resident.
Our curriculum has evolved to prepare you for how neurologists practice today. During your PGY2 year, in addition to the traditional neurology hospital consultation service rotations, you will have four months of outpatient neurology. During these four months, you will spend your time in urgent neurology clinic, and in the neuromuscular, demyelinating diseases, movement disorders and neuro-oncology specialty clinics. In addition, you will study EEG and EMG for six weeks in order to gain a basic understanding of these diagnostic studies. We want to give you the early opportunity to explore the subspecialty areas of neurology to determine if you want to pursue a fellowship, and to give you a strong basis to build on going forward.
You begin your PGY3 year in the classroom. During July and August, you will study neuro-anatomy and correlate what you are learning with clinical cases and neuroradiology. It is a time to study without being paged, and to build close friendships with your class. Our residents really enjoy this break from clinical responsibilities to focus on neuroanatomy, and to spend the summer with each other.
You will design much of your PGY3 and PGY4 years yourself from a vast selection of electives. For adult neurology residents, we have increasingly changed the time spent in the required three months of child neurology to outpatient clinics. We recognize you will care for adolescents in your office, but are not very likely to care for children in the hospital. Our child neurology faculty are wonderful teachers, and our residents really enjoy spending time with them.
On Friday afternoons, there are two hours of protected educational time for didactic lectures from faculty. We have an 18-month curriculum that includes a series of lectures in every subspecialty of neurology, such as stroke, epilepsy, neuromuscular disorders and neuroinfectious diseases. During the course of your residency, you will hear each lecture topic twice, so that you can benefit most from each lecture depending on where you are in your training. Faculty cover your pagers during these two hours, and unless you are on call, you leave after didactics is over at 4 pm on Friday. Our faculty are incredibly committed to our residents and give selflessly of themselves to make sure you have an outstanding educational experience.
As the Department of Neurology is in the Indiana University Neurosciences Institute, there are endless opportunities for research.
We are committed to your wellbeing. I encourage you to watch the resident testimonials on our website and follow us on Instagram. One evening as I was leaving, several residents were gathered in our resident room, as is so often the case. They told me that they not only support each other, but that they really like each other. They are friends. It is in this environment of support and friendship that you will thrive. The single most important question to ask as you look for a residency program is to ask the residents: “Are you happy?” My residents will tell you they are happy. We would love to have you come join us.
