Program Curriculum

“Admitter month is a good opportunity to test time management skills with a high volume of admissions and consults. It also allows for learning objectives in consults.”

“I enjoy working with Dr. Khan because she is a very knowledgeable clinician. She always encourages me to provide a thorough physical exam and challenges me to be efficient and effective with even my most challenging patients.”

“Dr. Kiazand is one of the most approachable attendings in the program. I especially liked her joint examination sessions and appreciate her always trying to make us better and more well-rounded residents.”

“Dr. Wegrecki has taught me how attention to simple things such as patient medication refills can make a huge impact on ongoing primary care for a particular patient. It was great working with her.”

“All the attendings in Cardiology make an active effort to teach and include residents in the decision-making process. This rotation helps to foster critical thinking/analytical process in residency.”

“Dr. Ward does a wonderful job of allowing the residents to determine a plan for the patient. He has an excellent rapport with patients.”

“Dr. Butcher helped me to develop a systematic way to pre-round on my patients and how to break complex problems down into smaller pieces.”

“Dr. Siedsma is the ideal critical care physician. He is unrivaled in kindness, patient care, family discussions, fund of knowledge, inclusion of residents in decision making, and is always calm and collected even in very stressful situations.”

“Dr. Donadee set the bar high when it came to patient management and resident presentations. Her high standard set the tone for the rest of my rotation. I appreciated the learning environment she provided.”

“Excellent attendings were all very approachable and took time to listen to our H&Ps and allowed us to provide our own assessment and plan. We were also allowed to perform bedside procedures as well which was a huge plus.”

“I was fortunate enough to work with Dr. Willard for all three weeks while on my Endocrine rotation. Her passion for the field is apparent the first day you speak to her. She is very knowledgeable and takes the time to pass on that knowledge to the residents working with her. This may be in the form of teaching a subject on a white board, presenting us with articles to read and review and by doing endocrine board review questions.”

“It was a pleasure rounding with Dr. Selk on endocrinology. She was very approachable and gave residents the opportunity to come up with our own plan for each patient and then spent the time to make teaching points.”

“Dr. Sobel made endocrinology the most enjoyable and rewarding elective at Mercy. She inspired you to make a plan for each patient by giving you the tools and confidence to do so. She lightened our work burden by seeing many of the follow ups and this extra time allowed residents to read more and really appreciate endocrinology. She gave us useful reading assignments and gave us a chance to present articles to her. She spent lots of time teaching and making sure we understood the plans and learned from each patient experience.”

“Dr. Tadic is a thoughtful, compassionate, and enthusiastic care provider and teacher. He used evidence-based medicine in his daily teaching and found nuanced ways to help me look at age-old problems differently. Dr. Tadic both teaches with words and leads by example. His passion for the geriatric population and for optimizing inpatient geriatric care and minimizing any risks that may increase morbidity and mortality in the geriatric population is contagious. I enjoyed this rotation very much and have applied the things I have learned to my practice in inpatient medicine.”

“Dr. Philbin is an outstanding physician. He has a genuine love for medicine and taking care of his patients. He has a warm, welcoming approach to teaching, and he has a wealth of knowledge like no other. He teaches medicine very well, and he also teaches career skills well. The rapport he develops with his patients makes for excellent management in both the inpatient and outpatient settings. I have been lucky to work with and learn from Dr. Philbin.”

“Dr. Conroy remains my favorite hospitalist to work with, as her patient care and demeanor is second to none. She will find a teaching point with each patient which helps our learning process. I look forward to working with Dr. Conroy next year.”

“It is always an interesting experience rounding with Dr. Foust. She has good intuition about patient care. She is also very practical in her clinical approach. She takes the time to make good disposition planning. I will hope to work with her more in the future.”

“Dr. Abunto was always available and he provided great insight into our patient care decision-making. He offered constant support for us and made us feel very comfortable in making independent decisions.”

“Dr. Toor was always approachable and open to our suggestions about patient management but also intervened when he felt it was needed. I felt like we had a good balance on our team.”

“Working with Dr. Hasan is always exciting as he always has very interesting information to share regarding diseases and his knowledge about recently published articles is unparalleled.”

“Dr. Safyan is an amazing clinician. How he breaks down cases is always amazing to watch. His PE skills are excellent and his bedside manner was great as well. One of the best teachers at Mercy.”

“It’s always a pleasure to work with Dr. Krauze. Very knowledgeable and always willing to share. His knowledge regarding Board points is excellent. His clinical reasoning is excellent as well.”

“Dr. Verdream is an excellent attending physician. He has a great wealth of knowledge and is strong at teaching infectious disease topics and applying the latest guidelines to daily management plans. He emphasizes daily teaching and remains up to date on the most recent guidelines. He has a welcoming approach to patients in both the inpatient and outpatient settings. It was a pleasure to work with and learn from him.”

“Dr. Yassin is an excellent attending. Very energetic and friendly. He is also very enthusiastic to teach. Dr. Yassin regularly assigned us topics or articles to read and to discuss together next day. He spends plenty of time with each patient during rounds. We stopped by Radiology and Lab many times to read and discuss tests with the radiologist and lab technicians.”

“Dr. Passero was excellent during this rotation - he took time each day for just teaching new topics. His ability to extract information from each patient’s presentation is impressive and I specifically enjoy his table teaching style.”

“It was amazing to see how Dr. Zaretskya quickly reaches the diagnosis based on physical examination. Dr. Zaretskya's approach to medical problems is amazing and helped to improve my approach toward medical problems.”

“Dr. Jhamb was very helpful on my night rotation. He would love to teach during any admission, regardless of how busy the night was. After staffing admissions, he would send me articles pertaining to the admission so I could review my pathophysiology and management.”

“On my night rotation, Dr. Toor was helpful when I staffed patients, always encouraging me to think of other differential diagnoses. He also ran good rapid response teams and would answer any questions we had afterwards.”

“This is an important rotation for us to do to be able to talk about difficult issues with families and patients. I appreciated the opportunity to do so.”

“Dr. Thurston took time out to teach me the essentials of hospice and palliative care medicine, including providing me with relevant articles, which I was able to incorporate into practice. H clearly cares about his craft as well as quality improvement and evidence-based medicine.

“Dr. Ghobrial is an outstanding physician. He has a very efficient, yet thorough approach to obtain accurate medical histories, and his clinical skills are unrivaled. His knowledge is incredible, and he is an excellent educator. He has a very warm, welcoming approach to teaching. His combination of intelligence, clinical skills, and experience make him an excellent physician.”

“Dr. Patel is great to work with and an approachable mentor. He is a role model for a PCP and has a great relationship with his patients, while also using every opportunity to teach the residents.”

“Dr. Kreit spent a lot of time teaching us during the rotation. Not only did he teach us based on the patients we were seeing, but her also went through his interesting case list to pick out things we had not seen up till that point. He went over chest X-rays and CT scans with each patient whereby I now feel more comfortable reading both and not relying on the radiologic read. It was a pleasure to work with Dr. Kreit.”

“Dr. Kass was a pleasure to work with. His main interests are in ILD and after working with him I feel more comfortable in recognizing, managing and treating patients afflicted with ILD. He spent a lot of time teaching as well.”

“Dr. Curci is one of the most compassionate clinicians I have ever worked with. Despite the challenging work-load and multitude of difficult patients she encounters daily, she seems to have a natural aptitude for seeing patients for who they really are, approaching them with compassion, and rooting through their pathology to see what they might need most to ameliorate their condition. She takes extremely thorough histories, teaches daily at the bedside, and also gives board-relevant pearls during rounds to remind learners of medication side effects and drug interactions. I very much enjoyed seeing patients with her, gained better understanding the management of inpatient psych patients, and saw how that might translate into the outpatient setting. Finally, I appreciate Dr. Curci's keen sense of what pathologic manifestations may be due to organic causes instead of psychologic disorders. She also spends time teaching about this, which I feel is very valuable for residents who are trying to decipher the causes of their patient's seeming psychological disorders and getting them the best treatment for the underlying causes as soon as possible.”

“Dr. Lienesch was excellent to work with; he has a way of teaching that is very relaxed yet still informative. He is able to find teaching points for the residents in almost everything that we did, from clinic visits to consults.”

“Dr. Helfrich is a wonderful educator; working in his clinic was enjoyable and educational. He allowed residents to do procedures such as steroid injections, and also provided excellent guidance and learning points when staffing inpatient consults.”