Program Curriculum

Each academic year is designed in blocks of four weeks. There are 13 blocks in each academic year.

(Click here to see the academic year blocks by PGY level)

Night Medicine and Primary Care Office are each conducted in 2-week segments.

Residents complete at least one rotation in each of the major subspecialties of internal medicine, with additional opportunity to repeat the same rotation in a different year as schedule permits.

Curriculum is subject to change. Individual curricula may vary from the above template.

In addition to Teaching Rounds, residency conferences include:

Morning Report
Grand Rounds
Noon Conference
PGY-3 led Morbidity and Mortality Conference (with discussion of root cause analysis)
Best Cases Conference

Internal Medicine Electives

Addiction Medicine (Mercy/Presbyterian, R2-R3 only)
Admit/Medical Consultation
Cardiology
Endocrinology
Gastroenterology
Infectious Diseases
Hematology/Oncology (Mercy/Hillman Cancer Center)
Nephrology
Neurology
Primary Care Office (private office)
Pulmonary Diseases
Research
Rheumatology
Toxicology (Mercy/Presbyterian, R2-R3 only)

Additional non-internal medicine electives may also be requested.

What our Residents are saying about their rotations:

Admit/Medical Consultation

Dr. Conroy served as an excellent role model through the duration of this rotation. She was always encouraging, was always available to answer questions, and took every opportunity she had to teach.
Overall, it was great working with Dr. Mash Khan. He is very respectful towards patients and cares about effectively communicating with their families. He teaches the same to his residents.
Dr. Harvey is an excellent communicator, strong leader, and compassionate teacher. He connects with patients and residents easily and remains up to date on the most current diagnostic and treatment modalities. I have learned a lot from him – and more than just medicine. I consider it a privilege to work with him.
It was a pleasant experience working with Dr. Jhamb. He is very knowledgeable and efficient at his work. He provides good learning pearls in morning reports.

Ambulatory Medicine

Dr. Noor Khan is excellent to work with. She practices evidence-based medicine and does very well with teaching different topics. She always looks at the patient and comorbidities.
Dr. Kiazand was very approachable and always wanted to know what we wanted from the rotation. She provided me with good feedback.
Discussing patients with Dr. Wegrecki is something I really look forward to! She offers great insights and asks thought-provoking questions enabling me to challenge myself when it comes to patient management. She is a great listener and has great patience as a teacher.

Cardiology

Dr. Ward is an enthusiastic and dedicated teacher who uses both his experience and evidence-based knowledge to teach his residents. He took many opportunities to teach on everything from EKGs to Echo's to bedside exam. The more we were interested, the more he taught. I truly appreciated his zeal for instruction and patient care. Dr. Ward and his colleagues demonstrated how to be both great cardiologists as well as internists while approaching their patient's myriad of medical issues.
Dr. Adhar is one of the best teachers I have ever had. Working with him and learning from him was an absolute honor. His love for his profession, his enthusiasm for teaching, and his sense of humility sets him apart from his peers.
We are incredible lucky to have Dr. Palmer as part of our cardiology team. She is approachable, compassionate, and enthusiastic about teaching. She encourages residents and is always willing to answer questions. We are provided with a good level of autonomy balanced with supervision, and she is very up to date with current research and management guidelines.
Dr. Fallert is a wealth of knowledge and rounding with him throughout the block gives us useful and practical medical knowledge. He is aware of the needs of our patient population and tries to develop plans that will encourage compliance and better health for all our patients. He readily answers questions and is one of the most enlightening people to work with.

Critical Care Medicine

Dr. Butcher is an excellent physician, mentor, and teacher. His morning rounds are the perfect balance of teaching and efficiency.
Dr. Bishop is a truly wonderful person to work with. He challenges and encourages you to create your own plan for a patient. He is open to listening to residents and makes you feel comfortable on rounds.
Dr. Siedsma was always willing to discuss topics and patients in an open manner, fostering a welcome environment that was great for learning.
Dr. Abdulmajeed is very knowledgeable. He is always available for any concerns. He is always very encouraging and is well-liked by residents.

Emergency Medicine

Valuable skills were gained in the ED that enhanced my history taking abilities.
Dr. Nasser is a treasure. Her kindness and collaborative spirit made me feel like an important part of the team.

Endocrinology

Dr. Selk was amazing throughout my rotation and always took the time to teach both on rounds and formally during sessions. I learned extensively not only what to consider while managing DM but also other endocrinology issues including thyroid and adrenal disorders. She also took the time to review and summarize articles to ensure we’re practicing evidence-based medicine.
Dr. Sobel was wonderful throughout my rotation. She was very comprehensive in her rounding and conducted them first in a conference room environment where we could appreciate the patterns in our patients with BMG/insulin requirements. She also took the time to teach every day and create a very comfortable learning environment.
Drs. Willard and Pinkhasova were an absolute pleasure to work with. They provided insightful feedback and always took time to teach. This was one of the most helpful rotations of my residency.

Gastroenterology

Dr. Singh is an excellent physician. He remains up to date on the most current diagnostic and therapeutic recommendations. He takes time to teach residents and has a warm approach to patients. He is efficient and skilled in procedures, and it was a pleasure to work with and learn from him.
I had multiple, thorough discussions with Dr. Chopra on cirrhosis, IBD, and other topics that resulted in a deeper and better understanding of work up and management.

Geriatrics

Dr. Tadic is an excellent mentor and a career guidance expert. He helped me get connected with people in my field of interest. He also has great research experience, and this helped me to gain insight into an academic career. He is also a very good teacher and a caring physician to his patients. I really enjoyed working with him and a firmly believe that he is a valuable resource to the residents.
I appreciate that Dr. Tadic sends out the assigned patients the night before and provides us with insightful reading material at the start of the rotation. He takes the time to know his residents and identify their weaknesses and strengths.

General Internal Medicine

Dr. K. Patel was approachable, he knows his patients so well, and has excellent rapport. He took the time to explain his clinical reasoning and to review evolving patient plans during rounds and throughout the day while simultaneously providing teaching about clinical medicine practical medicine, and the business aspects of medicine as well.
Dr. Carrington is an excellent role model of what a Traditionalist should be. She takes the time to see her inpatient census in detail and with care despite having a busy outpatient schedule. She is always available and easy to approach.
Dr. Philbin is the most compassionate and caring attending I have worked with so far. He has extensive experience with all his patients and provides useful information to keep track of when dealing with difficult patients. I am looking forward to working with him again.
Dr. Foust is an asset to our program. She loves to teach and takes an active role to make sure residents get the exposure and learning they should. We are very thankful for her efforts to make teaching rounds more effective and enjoyable.
Dr. Kondaveeti is an excellent educator and his enthusiasm for teaching is infectious as a learner. He takes the time to teach on rounds as well as provides lessons after rounds depending on the residents’ interests. He also took the time to provide mentorship and further career advice which was very much appreciated.
Dr. Ashish Sharma is an excellent physician. His experience in the practicality of medicine is something that I have learned a lot from. He is always available to the team for questions, very approachable and is also comfortable with letting senior residents take a more active leadership role.
Dr. Toor has great bedside manners and always has a calm demeanor which is very much liked by his patients. We had challenging and difficult conversations with families during this rotation and he did an excellent job dealing with them and modeled professionalism.

Hematology/Oncology

Dr. Krauze helps us focus on board-relevant information and is efficient with consults. It was a pleasure working with him.
Amazing experience working with Dr. Yee. She is very knowledgeable and approachable.

Infectious Diseases

Dr. Volosky was an absolute joy to learn from during my ID rotation. He allowed us enough time to see patients, come up with our own plan, and present. Dr. Volosky is approachable, compassionate towards patients, and an excellent teacher.
Dr. Arbulu is one of the best teachers I had on any rotation. He without fail was enthusiastic every single day about teaching and about learning. His humble attitude was welcomed, and he was always approachable.

Nephrology

Dr. Puli LOVES teaching. He is so approachable, always willing to help, and listens to residents.
Dr. Abramovitz is an amazing teacher. He is extremely knowledgeable, and he divides the rotation well between teaching sessions from consults and then pure board review time.

Neurology

Working with Dr. Zaretskya is an amazing experience. She goes out of her way to teach and she clearly practices evidence-based medicine. She is also very respectful of her residents’ time and workload. She always has a smile on her face.
Dr. Z is widely-regarded among the residents as a treasure, and she has completely earned this reputation. She is a phenomenal teacher, incredibly knowledgeable, and makes confusing diagnoses seem completely obvious. I appreciated every second we got to work together.

Night Medicine

I really enjoy working with Dr. Hasan. When going over a plan, he always takes the residents’ points into consideration and ever defers to them when there isn’t one clear way to manage an issue. He takes the time to teach the residents and recaps at the end of staffing so that nothing is missed. These few extra minutes of his time really make us feel more comfortable that nothing will fall through the cracks and we learn more from the experience.
Dr. Zaidi was a great attending physician on nights. He stops down to the resident lounge to invest in teaching. Every night he would teach based on topics related to our admissions. He would print out guidelines and articles and go over subjects in depth. He even played rounds of medical jeopardy which led into many more teaching points. I appreciate how much time he invested in overnight teaching despite admissions, conditions, and pages. He really made the time to make learning on nights a priority.
I was thankful I had Dr. Abunto to round with. He was so understanding and always did what was best for the patients and the residents.

Palliative Care

Dr. Thurston exemplified compassionate care for patients and families and facilitated an educational rotation typified by real-time feedback, progression of skills that we read in articles to the bedside within a short period of time, and discussion of articles and topics daily. Dr. Thurston patiently and fully answered many questions we had for him and modeled excellent communications skills.
Dr. Thurston is an amazing teacher. It was an enlightening experience see him interact with families and help them understand the whole picture of their loved ones' medical situations.

Primary Care

What a joy it was working with Dr. Ghobrial. He took time to teach a wide variety of topics. He encouraged independent patient evaluation and planning. He treats his patients with the utmost respect and compassion. He is a wonderful example to a growing physician.
Dr. K. Patel gave me insight into the business side of running a clinic. He was also very welcoming of any questions I had. He was great to work with.
It is evident that Dr. R. Patel’s patients respect and cared about him. He has a great bedside manner. He allowed for autonomy and ultimately let us decide management plans. He gave huge insight into the business aspect of running an outpatient medical practice.

Psychiatry

It was a pleasure to work with Dr. Curci. She is very knowledgeable about both psychiatry and medicine and is effective at interweaving both fields for the better of the patient and their care. She is a very effective teacher.
Dr. Golden is an excellent physician to work with. His demeanor puts patients at ease, and I will attempt to integrate some of his techniques in history gathering in my own practice.

Pulmonary Diseases

Dr. Kreit is a great role model and it was wonderful to work with him. He is a calm, approachable, and academic physician. The rotation with him was a full learning experience.
Dr. Semaan was friendly, thorough, and showed us common imaging findings to look out for on chest CTs. This was helpful in daily practice as internal medicine physicians.
Dr. El Ali provided great feedback and taught us every day. He was very approachable with questions and great to work with.

Rheumatology

Dr. Birnbaum is a great addition to the rheumatology department at Mercy. Stressed the importance of thorough physical exam and would teach residents physical exam maneuvers and importance exam findings in various disease pathologies. Would actively teach various rheum topics that were board relevant. Easy to work with. Would gladly work with again.
Dr. Helfrich was a fantastic mentor. He knows a lot about his clinic patients yet gave residents autonomy to make their own medical decisions on patients. He really helped us broaden our differential understanding of rheumatology.

Toxicology

This was one of the best rotations I have done during my residency. Such an interesting specialty of medicine. The best part was the willingness to teach! The fellows AND attending regularly spent extra time doing 'chalk talks' or even had prepared ppt lectures that they would give on a wide variety of topics. By far some of the best teaching I have received and notable enthusiasm to do so.