John H. Stroger, Jr.
Hospital of Cook County

The John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook County serves as the safety net hospital for the city of Chicago and surrounding suburbs in Cook County. It is located one block from our downtown campus. Rush Internal Medicine residents rotate on the HIV ward at Stroger Hospital for at least one month during their three years of training. This unit is run as two ward-type teams, which each consist of two interns and one senior resident. The teams are supervised by an Infectious Disease attending who rounds daily on all the patients. This rotation is unique experience because of the significant number of HIV patients drawn to the hospital by the CORE center. The CORE center is a joint Rush/Stroger outpatient facility dedicated to providing comprehensive care to individuals and families affected by HIV and other infectious diseases.

Skokie Hospital NorthShore University Health Systems

Skokie Hospital is a 268 bed community based hospital located in the suburb of Skokie, approximately 30 minutes north of Rush University Medical Center.

Every year residents of RUMC have the opportunity to spend one to two months at the community hospital. There will be four teams of medical residents, who rotate at Skokie Hospital every month for a total of four residents and four interns. In addition, fourth year medical students may assigned as sub-interns to some of the teams. There is no geographic system and therefore Housestaff cover patients on all general medical floors, telemetry, and the ICU. Call is every fourth night and there is a cap of five admissions per intern per call including one ICU admission. The residents work closely with the attending physicians and consultants who are committed to education of the Housestaff. Many agree that the experience here will prove richly rewarding both for its clinical excellence as well as the insight gained by being a part of a well established community hospital. The residents' didactic education consists of a daily interactive morning report, ICU rounds, and noon conferences with various specialists of Internal Medicine. Additionally, there are monthly Grand Rounds and Clinical-Pathologic-Conferences given by attending physicians which residents are invited to attend. These compliment the residents' clinical education.

Left to Right: Jennifer Zander, MD & Majid Afshar, MD.

The residents point almost universally toward their intense exposure in Pulmonary/ Critical Care and Cardiovascular medicine as highlights of their experience at Skokie Hospital. The program has the benefit of an "open" Intensive Care Unit in which the residents follow both ICU and general medical floor patients during their rotation. You will have the opportunity to work hand-in-hand with the Pulmonary and Critical Care attendings, whom are uniquely focused on involving the Housestaff in all aspects of patient care. The medical center has also recently been honored as one of the nation's finest hospitals for its excellence in cardiovascular medicine. This accolade results from the dedicated Cardiology staff and the hospital's cutting edge Cardiac Catheterization facilities. A substantial number of patients have accelerated coronary artery disease and as a consequence, the term "rule-in MI" is used almost as frequently as "rule-out MI."

Two chief residents are assigned to Skokie Hospital for the academic year who schedule morning report, attending rounds, and noon conferences. Meal tickets are distributed at the beginning of the rotation and lunch is provided during conference. Housestaff are reimbursed through the GME office for traveling expenses (gas, tolls) at the end of the rotation.