Curriculum

Schedule

Our comprehensive schedule is designed around a 4+1 format for all categorical and preliminary internal medicine residents. This format alternates 4-week blocks of rotations with a week-long continuity clinic block (+1). Annually, this will provide 10 weeks of continuity clinic experience that is uninterrupted from any inpatient responsibilities. During the continuity clinic week, residents will also have protected time for didactics and research projects.

On average over their 3 years (36 months), our residents will complete 10 months of inpatient wards rotations, 4-5 months of ICU, and over 10 months of outpatient rotations (continuity clinic/subspecialty clinics). We have a dedicated night float rotation, so our residents are never scheduled for shifts longer than 12 hours. In addition, our resident schedule is structured so you will have over 6 months of individualized learning experiences that you can select to better suit your own career and educational needs.

Rotations

Our residents have all their core inpatient rotations at HCA Florida Blake Medical Center, a 383-bed tertiary care hospital. The hospital is a level II trauma center, 1 of only 6 burn centers in FL, as well as a comprehensive stroke center. We have three separate ICU’s including a medical/trauma ICU, burn ICU, and cardiovascular ICU.

Expected rotations in the inpatient setting include inpatient wards, ICU, night float, emergency medicine as well as specialty rotations such as cardiology, gastroenterology, geriatrics, hematology/oncology, infectious disease, nephrology, neurology. Additional electives in both the inpatient and outpatient setting include both internal medicine subspecialties as well as other specialties. Rotations include: allergy and immunology, anesthesiology, dermatology, obstetrics and gynecology, ophthalmology, plastic surgery and burns, physical medicine and rehabilitation, pulmonology, radiology, rheumatology, thoracic surgery.

We have a wonderful dedicated hospitalist faculty that leads our inpatient wards service and are available throughout the day for supervision and teaching. None of our inpatient wards teams are led by primary care/private physicians who may not be able to commit their entire attention to teaching and supervision due to obligations outside the hospital. Our ICU is also fully staffed 24/7 by an in-house critical care attending who supervises and educates the residents throughout the day and night.

Our outpatient clinic sites are at HCA Blake Primary Care Clinic, Bradenton Physicians - MaxHealth, and Complete Care. Residents will form their own patient panel and schedule patients with them throughout their 3 years here. There is protected didactic time during their clinic week and our residents and faculty utilize the Yale School of Medicine outpatient curriculum as well as MKSAP. All our categorical residents also complete a geriatrics rotation in the outpatient setting, emphasizing care unique to the elderly.

Didactics

All of our residents, except on certain electives, have mandatory protected didactic time every day as part of their educational curriculum, totalling 7 hours per week. Our didactics are both resident as well as faculty-led and cover a broad scope of subjects including various subspecialties, hospitalist-centered topics, and outpatient-centered topics. The recurring aspects of our didactic curriculum are listed below.

Highlights

• Case Report: Case-based presentation led by a resident with faculty/PD engagement.
• Noon Conference: Faculty-led lectures and presentations with superb involvement from our core faculty, including infectious disease, nephrology, cardiology, and clinic preceptors.
• Hospitalist Lectures: Hospitalist-led lectures and presentations covering high-yield topics for their boards as well as hospitalist/wards practice.
• EKG Review: Monthly lectures led by our cardiology faculty teaching both the basics as well as more advanced nuances of EKG interpretation.
• MKSAP Review: Every Friday, our hospitalists review MKSAP questions and board prep with our residents. This is done concurrently in our outpatient clinics as well.
• Morbidity and Mortality: Confidential and collaborative educational conference to review adverse outcomes and perform root cause analysis to identify potential areas of improvement in future care.
• Journal Club: Resident-led presentation on a current or landmark trial, with the goal to develop the skills to interpret clinical trials and understand evidence-based medicine.
• POCUS/Simulation: Monthly resident-led hands-on sessions focusing to increase resident understanding and capability of bedside ultrasound and its multitude of uses as well, as well as a focus on utilizing simulation training to enhance procedural skills and comfort in rapid response and code scenarios. There are dedicated ultrasound machines for educational use as well as a Simbionix Ultrasound Mentor machine for incredible simulated learning.
• PGY3 Board Review: Protected weekly board review sessions with our faculty to help prepare our PGY3 residents to pass the boards.

Step 3 and Board Preparation

We are committed to the education of our residents and provide a plethora of resources and support to help them succeed and excel with their required testing necessary for medical licensing and IM board certification. 

Step 3 and Board Preparation

We are committed to the education of our residents and provide a plethora of resources and support to help them succeed and excel with their required testing necessary for medical licensing and IM board certification.

Step 3

• Complimentary access to the UWorld QBank for Step 3.
• All residents will be reimbursed for the cost of the Step 3 exam, contingent on passing.
• Dedicated academic days off for their Step 3 exams, that are additional to their PTO.

ABIM Board Exam

• Complimentary access to MKSAP digital package including QBank and Board Basics for all of residency.
• Complimentary access to NEJM Knowledge+ QBank for all of residency.
• Complimentary access to UWorld ABIM QBank during the second half of 3rd year.
• MKSAP Review weekly for all our residents, either in-hospital or at our outpatient clinics.
• Dedicated and protected weekly board review for all our 3rd year residents.
• Complimentary purchase of comprehensive board review course at the end of PGY3 year (i.e. Awesome Board Review, Cleveland Clinic, etc.)

Research

All of our residents are required to participate in scholarly activity during their internal medicine residency, as outlined by ACGME requirements. Our residents participate in leading didactics such as morning reports, as well as a journal club and a morbidity & mortality conference. In addition, we require all of our residents to present at minimum an abstract or case report at our annual Blake Research Day event, with many advancing to our regional HCA West Florida Research Day. In addition, these events provide an excellent jumping point for our residents to continue these projects and have them published in journals. We provide funding to assist with publication costs for our residents.

We have excellent support for resident research activities. We have a dedicated research coordinator who is on site weekly to help coordinate any research projects that our residents are interested in pursuing. In addition, Dr. Olu Oyesanmi is our division research director and will supervise and guide you in your research endeavors as well. Each resident is assigned a research mentor to facilitate in all research and scholarly activity.

We love to send our residents to various national and regional conferences as well. If accepted, we provide funding to assist with your travel and enrollment costs.