Interns

Senior Resident

A second or third year resident assigned to a medical floor supervises, teaches, and evaluates the interns, sub-interns, and medical students. He/She is the primary resource of the entire floor team for both academic and patient care related issues.

Senior of the House

Each day, the 10/11 Kellogg senior resident on-call is appointed to be the senior of the house. They are responsible for responding to all code situations in the hospital (with the exception of the SICU or pediatric codes), assisting admitting personnel who may have questions on assignment of admissions, evaluating patients on other hospital services requiring emergent medical assessment or care and admitting for orange team in the weekends. Following the resident’s evaluation, the resident is expected to discuss the case with an Internal Medicine attending.

Teaching Senior

Teachings seniors will participate in a variety of educational activities. They are expected to attend morning report and join their assigned team on rounds. Teaching residents take part in a weekly critical appraisal conference which will improve medical information gathering and interpretation skills. They receive training in systems-based practice, participate in the quality improvement activities of the department and will also learn more formal techniques of educating and providing feedback. At the end of the month the teaching residents lead a journal club with the critical thinking group.

Student

Third year Rush medical students have a twelve-week rotation in Internal Medicine. Four weeks of the rotation are spent on one of the general medical floors. Students are expected to be on call every fourth night and to participate in patient care under the supervision of the housestaff. In addition, there are separate educational activities scheduled for third year students.

Sub-intern

Fourth year medical students function in an intern’s role under the direct supervision of a senior resident. All orders written by a sub-intern must be co-signed by a floor resident. In addition there are separate educational activities for sub-I’s.

Chief Residents

	Left to right: Carol Burke, MD, Amie J. Tucker, MD, Prakash Balan and Sonali Khandelwal, MD.

The Department of Internal Medicine at Rush University Medical Center at Chicago, Illinois is one of more than 400 U.S. Internal Medicine residency programs, 120 of which are university programs. Our program is one of the 20 largest. The six chief residency positions, four at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center and two at Rush North Shore Medical Center, are highly competitive and require a commitment to an additional year of training at the PGY 4 level. The Chief Resident position includes a wide variety of responsibilities including patient care, teaching, evaluation and feedback, administration and scholarly activities. These responsibilities apply to interactions with our preliminary, categorical, medicine-pediatrics, medicine-psychiatry, and Cook County Hospital/Rush Primary Care residents. Research opportunities can be arranged. Clinical activities of Chief Residents include an optional ½ day in their continuity clinic, 2 weeks of teaching attending rounds for 5 hours per week, 6 weeks as an attending internist on the RUI service, and 2 hours per week participating in Chairman’s Rounds. Chief Residents teach in the Rush Medical College Pathophysiology course and Rush Medical College Internal Medicine Clerkship Ambulatory lectures. The Chief Residents are driving forces in maintaining a procedure course for incoming PGY 1 trainees and a web-based patient signout for Internal Medicine residents. In their interactions with resident staff, the Chief Resident has have supervisory, teaching, and evaluation responsibility. The Chief Resident evaluates residents, and provide direct feedback to them. The Chief Resident is responsible for participating in the Department's Resident Evaluation Committee, Curriculum Committee, and Quality Assurance Committee. The Chief Resident is also an active participant in the monthly Departmental Senior Resident Medical Error Conference, weekly Ambulatory Internal Medicine Resident Critical Appraisal Conference, and the weekly Safety Conference. These three conferences are activities in systems based practice, practice based learning, continuous quality improvement, and patient safety which have led to studies improving patient care practices.

In addition, Chief Residents participate in various Medical Center wide committees-Quality Assurance, Medical Records, Graduate Medical Education Review, Computerized Physician Order Entry, the Emergency Response Team, Resuscitation Committee, Patient Safety Committee, Critical Care Committee, LLT Lab Committee, Pharmacy & Therapeutics Committee, and the Medication Errors Committee. The Chief Resident participates in the annual file review, interviewing process, and matching process of applicants to our residency training program. The Chief Resident also participates in completion of the American Board of Internal Medicine tracking forms on each and every resident in our program. Other administrative duties include scheduling of resident rotations, annual housestaff manual updates, and scheduling of conferences inclusive of Medical Grand Rounds. The Chief Resident is expected to actively participate in our monthly Journal Club, and Morbidity and Mortality Conference. Attendance at the 5 or 6 departmental resident weekly conferences is expected. The Chief Resident is expected to be available for crisis management inclusive of bed shortages. It is expected that the Chief Resident will learn to think like everyone in the Medical Center-attendings, residents, students, nursing personnel, administration, and ancillary healthcare professionals, but will only wear the heart of the house officer. The Chief Resident time is approximately 15% clinical, 35% teaching, and 50% administrative. Functioning as an attending internist on the RUI service, Chief residency eventuates in the acquisition and refinement of clinical, teaching, and administrative skills which will be of durable benefit to the career of the Chief Resident.