Internal Medicine Career Tracks
Exploring Your Options
Our Categorical Medicine, Primary Care Medicine and Medicine-Pediatrics residents have enriched career development opportunities during their training at Baystate.
We have created Tracks with various areas of concentration that augment our internal medicine curriculum and provide further engagement for residents in their areas of interest. The Tracks are incorporated into your Academic Half Day Sessions once a month.
Every resident is expected to select a track for the academic year.
Our Career Tracks
Internal Medicine Residency Career Tracks
Track Director(s): Venkatrao Medarametla, MD and Muhammad Umar, MD
Track Description: Hospital medicine is a specialty that requires expertise in providing medical care for complex patients and advanced knowledge of health care systems. The Internal Medicine Residency Hospital Medicine Track will provide residents interested hospital medicine with a greater understanding of hospital medicine and competencies in healthcare systems to provide outstanding care for hospitalized patients. This track will also be a great opportunity to provide residents with insights to the vast opportunities outside of clinical practice that a career in hospital medicine can provide, such as leadership, quality improvement, medical education, and research.
Learning Objectives: By the completion of the track learners will be able to:
- Discuss and learn at a higher level the SHM core competencies
- Identify the core areas of impact hospitalists provide to the healthcare system: evidence based care, quality improvement, interprofessional teamwork, clinical reasoning, documentation
- Obtain a greater understanding of management practice, organizational structure, and payment structure
- Identify career paths for hospitalists in addition to clinical care
Requirements for Completion:
Mandatory
- Attend track meetings
- Complete independent learning on Healthcare systems
- Participate in AHD team leadership program (if applicable)
- Complete IHI Open school and obtain certificate in Basic Quality Improvement
- Hospital Medicine Elective
- Participate in at least one hospital quality / safety committee
- Attend SHM national meeting
- Join local SHM chapter
- Participate in PURCH Resident Education Program to enhance medical education skills
- Clinical experience at a Baystate Health Community Hospital
Track Director(s): Christine Bryson, DO and Katie Jobbins, DO, MS
Track Description: The goal of the Humanities track is to introduce, gain deeper knowledge, and explore skills through a variety of activities that fall under the “humanities” umbrella in hopes to tap into physician fulfillment for our medicine and medicine/pediatric residents.
Learning Objectives: By the completion of the track learners will be able to:
- Describe and perform a variety of activities that explore Humanities in medicine
- Participate in a wide variety of activities related to Humanities opportunities
- Cultivate a learning environment which supports the residents creating a publishable piece of work related to Humanities that can be distributed to the entire health systems.
- Encourage each individual resident to submit a humanities scholarly project—essay, poem, photograph, etc. to a national publication.
- Create a resource guide—where to publish, guidelines, and references
Requirements for Completion:
Mandatory
- Participate in formal didactics at track meetings focused on topics ranging from analysis of on Op-Ed, narrative writing work-shop, application of Humanities to patient care, and how to write and prepare a humanities submission.
- Participate in the group project of creating and publishing a Baystate Humanities Journal.
- Provide regular ongoing updates on how residents are making use of Humanities topics at work and in their personal life.
- Senior residents will then become editors of the Humanities Journal and open submissions to other outside our track.
Optional
- Participate in BERST Museum rounds or Graphic Medicine rounds
- Participate in REC day with a “Release Party” and possible presenting of works created
Monthly Meeting Topics:(subjects may change) Tuesday 4-5 pm
July:Introduction, set expectations, Give out materials for year, Survey – Discuss print vs blog
August: Narrative writing work-shop with prompt (Jobbins absent)
September: Op-Ed/ Blog discussion
October: Visual Art—Resiliency and Building back up exercise (Ute Schmidt guest)
November: Narrative writing Work-shop
December: Photography – finding beautify in the winter
January: Intro Story Slam/Med Moth—Guest Speaker Angela, Andrew Solomon Moth, Physician Mom – Boston story slam
February: Story Slam—Make a resident Pod Cast
March: Graphic medicine
April: Narrative writing workshop to work on Journal/Blog
May: Finalize publication/ Post-survey
Faculty:
- Christine Bryson, DO
- Katie Jobbins, DO, MS
- Beth Eagleson, MD
- Rohini Harvey, MD
- Satoko Igarashi, MD
- Angela Sweeney, MEd, MA
Track Director: Riffat Sabir, MD, MEHP, FACP
Track Description: The medical education track is a 2-year long specialized track emphasizing clinical and didactic teaching skills, curriculum development, and educational research. The design of this track provides:
- A small learning community with shared interests and commitment to medical education
- A self-directed approach to Residents as Teachers (RATs)
- Mentorship and participation in educational research opportunities
- An opportunity to work on a mentored scholarly project
- A medium for collaborative learning, peer-peer learning and teaching
Learning Objectives: By the completion of the track learners will be able to:
- Foster skills for a medical education scholarship
- Demonstrate competency in evidence-based teaching
- Appraise various adult learning theories, acknowledge the differences, and apply at least one theoretical framework to current or planned health professions education
- Develop methods for assessment and feedback
- Participate in a wide variety of medical education opportunities
- Design a scholarly project in medical education
Educational Strategies:
The medical education track is a longitudinal educational experience, with the core curricular component being a monthly track workshop during residents' Academic-Half day. Additionally, residents will get opportunities for experiential learning and mentored scholarly project assistance and development. The outline and schedule for the workshop and educational sessions are outlined below.
- Core Curriculum
Principles of Scholarly Teaching:
- Traditional adult learning theories: Behaviorism, humanism, cognitivism, social cognitive theory, and constructivism
- Foundational adult learning theories: Andragogy, self-directed learning, and transformative learning
- Resurgent frameworks: Embodied/ somatic learning, spirituality, non-western perspectives
- Instructional strategies: Collaborative and inquiry based learning
- Instructional strategies: Bedside teaching
- Instructional strategies: Simulation/Role Play
- Instructional strategies: Teaching clinical Reasoning
- Instructional strategies: Virtual learning and teaching
- Learning through assessment and feedback: Identifying and supporting struggling learner
- Evidence-based teaching: Strategies for engaging learners
- Evidence-based teaching: Evaluating needs of diverse learners
Medical Education Scholarship:
- Introduction to educational scholarship
- Curriculum development: A six-step approach
- Creating objectives: SMART
- Frameworks for evaluation: Miller’s pyramid, Kirkpatrick’s Model & Glassick et al
- Study designs and methods
- Questionnaire and survey Research
- Ethics
- Identifying mentor, personnel, time, facilities for your project
- Disseminating your work and finding funding
- Writing a manuscript
2. Experiential Learning
- Peer teaching
- Scholarly project development
3. Scholarly Project Development
- Potential Ideas for Scholarly Project: New curriculum, needs assessment, educational intervention, instructional strategy, program evaluation
- IRB proposal submission package
- Poster presentation at BMC academic week, regionally or nationally.
Requirements for Completion
Mandatory:
- Participate in the PURCH Resident/Fellow Educators Program (PREP)
- Attend monthly core medical education topic meetings
- Participate in at least 2 PREP sessions with students
- Participation in the Academic Half Day residents' leadership program
- Participation in the 2-week medical education elective (if applicable)
- Participate in the PGY-2 Ultrasound Curriculum Training (if applicable)
- Identify and connect with a medical education mentor
- Complete a medical education scholarly project such as:
- Attend monthly core medical education topic meetings
- Create an educational experience for peers
- Write a review article
- Design and implement a longitudinal curricular development project
- Attend a national meeting and share what was learned
Optional:
- Participation in the BERST trainee track
- Participate in a BCEPT Session
- Attend NEGEA annual meeting
Track Director(s): Dr. Eduardo Nunez
Track Description: The Research Track is a special program for residents who wish to pursue a rigorous research program during residency. The overall goal of the research track is to encourage participation by anyone interested in learning and/or honing existing research skills and to foster their development throughout residency with skilled mentorship. The research track has allowed many of our residents to present their work at national meetings, to author peer-reviewed original research articles, and to compete for subspecialty fellowship slots.
Learning Objectives: By the completion of the track learners will be able to:
- Design and conduct group research projects, culminating in presentation at a national meeting, followed by publication.
- Discuss advanced didactic instruction on epidemiology, biostatistics and research design.
- Receive mentorship in research and scholarship.
Requirements for Completion:
Mandatory
- Participate in formal didactics at track meetings focused on topics ranging from the human subjects protection to specific research methods, as well as how to write an abstract and prepare a manuscript
- Participate in a research project
- Provide regular ongoing updates on protocols and completed studies to allow for feedback from mentors and track member peers
- Senior research track members will mentor junior members
Optional
- Participate in a research elective
Faculty Track Director(s): Eric Churchill, Yesenia Greeff, Maura Muñoz
Track Description: This track was created in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in 2020, when residents, students, and faculty recognized the need for a dedicated space in the Academic Half Day Structure for residents interested in learning more about how race and other socioeconomic factors affect our patients and their communities, as well as the healthcare system in general. Anti-racist efforts have been woven into many aspects of our residency training program, and this Social Justice Track is a part of these changes.
Learning Objectives: By the completion of the track learners will be able to:
- Identify and confront health disparities within our patient population including racial, linguistic and socioeconomic barriers to care
- Promote and conduct just, equitable, and anti-racist clinical practice with the goal of reducing health care disparities
- Design and participate in educational sessions to help promote an awareness of health disparities within our community presented by residents within the track, faculty and guest presenters from community organizations
- Identify strategies to enhance how the overall residency curriculum addresses social justice and health care disparities
Requirements for Completion:
Mandatory:
- Participate in monthly track meetings
- Identify a particular area within social medicine of interest and lead a discussion in that area.
Optional:
- Help lead a redesign of the Baystate educational curriculum to more strongly emphasize social medicine principals.
- Participate in community outreach events
Monthly Meeting Topics: (subjects may change)
Baystate’s Community Health Needs Assessment
Prison Health
Racial Justice in Health Care
Linguistic and Cultural barriers to care
Trauma informed care
Food Justice
Environmental Justice
Substance Abuse Outreach within Community
Police reform and community health
Community engagement
Public policy and health care
Tools for health advocacy
Race and medical research
Implicit bias and physicians
Identifying Racial Disparities in Healthcare & within our Community
Disparities Care LGBTQIA Community
Racial Justice Self-Evaluation adaptation from WC4BL report card
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