Graduate Medical Education

The Department of Medicine currently hosts two ACGME-accredited medicine residency programs, and thirteen ACGME-accredited fellowships, as follows:

Residency Programs PGY1 PGY2 PGY3 CMR Total
Categorical Internal Medicine 41 42 42 7 132
Primary Care Internal Medicine 16 16 16 3 51
Preliminary Medicine 5 5
Total 63 57 57 10 188
Fellowship Programs Fellows
Cardiology (UConn Health/Saint Francis Hospital and Medical Center) 9
Cardiology (Hartford Hospital) 15
Interventional Cardiology (UConn Health) 1
Interventional Cardiology (Hartford Hospital) 3
Endocrinology 4
Gastroenterology 9
Geriatrics 2
Hematology/Oncology 6
Infectious Disease 5
Nephrology 2
Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine 7
Rheumatology 5
Sleep Medicine 1
Advanced Heart Failure and Transplant 1
Total 69

The Department of Medicine is responsible for the oversight of more than one-third of the 600 trainees who are part of the UConn School of Medicine. To help train the approximately 250 residents and fellows, over 100 faculty members in the Department of Medicine are actively involved in residency and fellowship training as program directors, associate program directors, key clinical faculty members, clinical teachers, research advisors, and mentors.

Several highlights of our graduate medical education programs are in the areas of curriculum, evaluation, scholarly activity, recruitment, and leadership.

Overview

We aim to prepare our trainees to practice comprehensive internal medicine, emphasizing excellence in clinical skills and patient-centered, culturally aware, high value care. While at UConn, they will acquire the foundation necessary to be competitive for subspecialty training, or to directly enter the practice of primary care medicine or hospital medicine.

Curriculum

Curriculum development is an area of emphasis and innovation at UConn. We were one of the first programs in the country to develop web-based learning modules of more than 150 core topics in general internal medicine. This novel curriculum has been utilized as a model by a national audience. In addition, we were one of the first programs in the country to develop an EKG curriculum, a residency requirement of training in internal medicine, and have embraced simulation training in our programs. We have been using a Clinical Skills Lab in our program and have developed a curriculum in procedural simulation to enhance patient safety and quality of care. In 2006, we introduced a “Scholarship in Medicine” curriculum that helped lay the foundation for residents to develop skills in research principles, gain an understanding of quality care initiatives, and develop skills in self-evaluation, evidence-based medicine, and lifelong learning. More recently, our focus has been on individualized programs of study, such as our Clinician Educator Track, Primary Care and Office-Based Medicine Track, Health Equity Track, and Clinical Research Track. Finally, UConn is a founding participant in the ACGME Patient Safety Collaborative.

Scholarly Activity

All residents in the Department of Medicine participate in scholarly activity. As a result, our residents and fellows participate at the local, regional, and national levels in this arena. Annually, our core residency programs have over 75 submissions to the Connecticut Chapter of the American College of Physicians in original research and/or clinical vignettes. We also participate in the regional Society for General Internal Medicine as well as the National Society for General Internal Medicine. We also send approximately eight to 12 residents annually to national scientific meetings to present original research or papers in all of the subspecialties of internal medicine.

Recruitment

Our residency and fellowship programs match with American medical graduates, U.S. international medical graduates, and international medical graduates of the highest caliber.

Leadership

The leadership provides outstanding mentorship in academic medicine to residents, junior faculty, and more senior faculty. Current leadership of our educational programs includes Dr. Lynn Kosowicz, Interim Chair of Medicine; Dr. Jacqueline Nissen, Vice Chair of Education and Associate Dean for Graduate Medical Education; Dr. Robert Nardino, Program Director for Internal Medicine; and Dr. Thomas Lane, Program Director for Primary Care Internal Medicine.