Internal Medicine Residency Program in Washington, D.C.

The program recognizes that grueling working hours do not support successful education. The program is strict about the 80-hour rule and patient caps. The program demands residents work hard, but not to the point where exhaustion impedes the learning process. Burned out residents benefit neither the program nor our patients.

Details on call/shift schedules for different rotations can be seen in the “Rotations overview” section.

Yes. Each wards team has a teaching attending with whom residents round daily. The internal medicine attending will be with you for the entire rotation. You will be the primary decision-maker for your patients, with supervision and guidance from your attending.

Attendings are not allowed to write orders, except in cases of emergency, so house staff have complete ownership of their patients. This allows for the right balance of autonomy and supervision in patient care.

A key distinction in our hospital is that we have a substantial non-teaching service. Cases deemed appropriate for educational purposes are assigned to the teaching service. These patients are taken care of by the resident teams, whereas patients assigned to the non-teaching service, are cared for by hospitalists and nurse practitioners.

The American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) allows a maximum of four paid weeks of vacation per year. Since time off is crucial for residents to recharge and rest, the program offers additional time off during the holidays; every resident gets an additional six days including either New Year’s Day or Christmas Day.

Categorical interns will have three weeks off distributed throughout the academic year. At the end of the academic year, they will have a week off before returning as a resident, constituting the fourth week of vacation. Preliminary interns have four weeks off throughout the year in addition to the six days off during the holidays.

Daily noon conferences focus on the most pertinent topics that you will encounter on the wards. Each week, noon conferences concentrate on a different subspecialty. Grand Rounds are scheduled on Wednesdays in lieu of the noon conference. A visiting or local expert from varying specialties leads the discussion.

Resident morning reports are held every morning, except Wednesdays and Fridays. Intern morning reports are held  Wednesday mornings. On Friday mornings, we attend the Chairman’s conference.

You may also attend several other conferences held by the subspecialty medicine program (e.g. cardiology grand rounds, rheumatology, neurology, etc.). Residents also get the chance to rotate through the simulation lab to learn procedural skills, ventilator-associated issues, and ACLS skills.

We strongly believe your hard work should be appreciated. A variety of events are organized throughout the year, including happy hours, bowling nights, departmental retreats, an end-of-year banquet and holiday parties. Camaraderie allows us to work stronger together as a team, and one of the best ways to build this camaraderie is through such social gatherings.

This program emphasizes teamwork rather than encouraging the traditional hierarchy seen at many programs. We welcome and encourage interaction between all levels of the teams on the wards and in the intensive care units. We believe an open dialogue enriches the educational process, and we do not stifle interns, nor expect them to learn alone: we work and grow as a team.

The hospital has a host of ancillary services that perform many functions, including phlebotomy, IV therapy, respiratory therapists, PICC line nurses, EKG technicians, patient transport, etc. The availability of these ancillary services allows residents to focus on learning and enhances the clinical experience.

Working in Washington provides you with many choices for places of living. You may live as close as the trendy Dupont Circle, Adams Morgan, Woodley Park, NoMa, Columbia Heights (bus, Metro, and bike accessible) or as far as Silver Spring, MD and Arlington, VA. It all depends on your budget and lifestyle. In Washington, D.C., most of us pay $1400-$1800/month for a one-bedroom apartment. There are many options all around D.C. if you wish to seek roommates, furnished housing, etc.

Most residents commute by car, though some of us prefer to commute via public transport (bus, Metro, and shuttle). Parking at the hospital is free.

Residents are allotted $1300 annual food credit by the GME; this covers in-house dining expenses at the main cafeteria and the physicians’ cafeteria. The hospital has three food service offerings:

A great program evolves only with creative and honest feedback from the residents and faculty. Informal comments can always be directed to the chief residents, the program director, or your mentor. You can also provide anonymous feedback through our online program site. 

Residents participate and provide input and feedback at regular house staff committee meetings, chaired by the chief residents.

Other formal events when residents can share their concerns with the group include the annual intern and resident lunches and the annual retreat held each spring where residents discuss potential program changes in workgroups. These events allow residents to voice their concerns and suggest changes based on what they learned and witnessed during the academic year.

The program underwent a regularly scheduled ACGME site visit in June 2018 and was awarded full accreditation without citations for 10 years.

Passing the boards is an objective both the resident and the program work towards. Our program recruits bright residents who are eager to learn and brilliant faculty who love to teach. In addition to discussing several board-review questions each day at morning report, second-year residents are provided with MKSAP resources covered by the program, and third-year residents attend a faculty-led formal board review series to prepare for the boards.

Yearly in-training exams also provide a gauge for each resident’s preparedness of the boards and areas of strength and weakness. Our residents have found this multifaceted support crucial to passing their boards.

About half of our residents enter fellowship either immediately after their training or after a chief-resident year. Please visit the recent graduates page for post-graduate fellowship choices and destinations. 

Each year, you are provided an educational stipend of $833. Of this, $750 can be used to purchase computers or smartphones. Each year, unspent money carries over to the following year. So, as a categorical resident, you have a total education stipend of $2,499 during your residency.

No, only categorical residents attend continuity clinic.

You will be assigned a clinic attending as your primary ambulatory supervisor and mentor that you will be primarily working with for the duration of your training. You also get to work with all the clinic attendings at some point during your residency to enhance your approach and clinical experience.

We have two separate internal medicine training programs. Each has unique qualities. Since both hospitals are members of MedStar Health, we have a mutually beneficial relationship between the institutions, sharing services and educational opportunities.

Third- and fourth-year Georgetown medical students rotate at the Hospital Center on the medicine wards, MICU, CVICU, ambulatory clinics, and other subspecialty electives.

Some of our fellowship programs have been merged, including cardiology, endocrinology, gastroenterology and hematology/oncology. Some members of the Georgetown house staff rotate to the Hospital Center on subspecialty services, including in the CVICU and the heart failure service, since our hospital is a leading regional provider of cardiac education and services. You can choose to take electives at Georgetown University Hospital based on your areas of interest.

MedStar Washington Hospital Center currently has a fully integrated EMR system for inpatients and outpatients as well as electronic order entry through the Cerner MedConnect system.

There are endless opportunities to perform a large variety of procedures (central venous catheters, arterial lines, thoracentesis, lumbar puncture, paracentesis, joint aspirations and injections, etc.) As part of your training, all residents receive structured didactics on central line placement techniques prior to starting residency training.

A one-month research elective during one of your three years of training is available for residents in good standing with the program with a concrete plan for a research project with IRB approval.

Typically extremely compelling reasons are required for any electives pursued outside the District of Columbia. The D.C. area has other excellent hospitals where residents typically go for additional exposure in their fields of interest (e.g. MedStar Georgetown University Hospital, National Institutes of Health, etc.).