Inpatient service
UCF HCA Florida Fort Walton-Destin has two general medicine teaching services. Each team is comprised of an attending physician, one PGY2 or PGY3 resident, two interns, and joined by one medical student.
There is no overnight call on any of the inpatient ward services. Each general medicine team is capped at 16 patients with an individual intern cap of 10. If a team has reached its admissions cap or team cap, overflow patients will be admitted to the hospitalist service.
All residents are given one day off every seven days, averaged over four weeks. This vigorous system ensures that residents remain fully compliant with all ACGME work-hour regulations.
Sub-specialty teams
At UCF HCA Florida Fort Walton–Destin, we offer a wide range of specialties. During each rotation, the resident will interact with and learn from experts in their respective subspecialty fields. There is no overnight call on subspecialties.
These elective rotations also strictly follow the ACGME work hour regulations and impose caps to allow time for learning.
Sub-specialties offered include:
- Pulmonology/critical care, cardiology, nephrology, endocrinology, gastroenterology, hematology/oncology, infectious disease, neurology, rheumatology, dermatology, palliative care, primary care, geriatrics, emergency medicine and anesthesiology.
Outpatient clinic
We provide outstanding ambulatory education to our residents through our partnership with White Wilson Medical Center, which has a well-established outpatient and multi-specialty presence in the region. Residents can provide care to their panel of patients under the supervision of experienced faculty.
Residents are on outpatient internal medicine every fifth week on a 4+1 block schedule.
Night float
The night float team is comprised of a senior resident and interns. It is a 12-hour night shift is the main purpose of the night float team, which is to provide coverage for the inpatient medicine day teams and admit patients.
The intern on the night team is responsible for providing cross-coverage on all the residency patients in the inpatient service. During nights, the resident team responds to rapids for deteriorating patients of the GME inpatient teams, stroke alerts, and code blues for all patients within the hospital.
Medical intensive care unit (MICU)
The MICU is a 24-bed unit staffed by a critical care attending physician, a senior resident physician, and interns. Each shift is 12 hours, from 6:00am to 6:00pm. MICU rounds follow a multidisciplinary approach, which includes the participation of pharmacists, social workers, physical therapists, and nursing staff assigned to each patient. The MICU team is responsible for rapid responses and code blues on all patients throughout the hospital.
Conference schedule
Each Thursday, the program hosts an educational block comprising a case conference and a lecture. This is a protected time for all residents.
During case conference presentations, interns are expected to present an interesting or unusual medical case. This conference aims to discuss and review historical, physical, and diagnostic data points, providing a forum for discussing a particular case's diagnostic reasoning and management.
This time is also used for morbidity and mortality conferences, grand rounds, journal clubs, simulation and procedure training. Different specialists attend and give didactic lectures about core internal medicine topics, following the ABIM board curriculum. Occasionally, blocks of MKSAP will be completed and reviewed by the group during the lecture. All residents are expected to attend the educational block.
Academic didactics/internal medicine board review
We do live didactic blocks in person on Thursday afternoon.
Morning report
We have morning report facilitated by our Program Director, Associate Program Directors, and teaching faculty. We generate a follow-up clinical question for our learners based on the day's discussion and provide follow-up teaching slides that are one of the best highlights of our morning report.
M&M meetings
Once a month, we organize morbidity and mortality meetings. The purpose is to learn from complications and errors, modify behavior and judgment based on previous experiences, and prevent repetition of errors. The focus of these meetings is improved patient care. As a result of M&M presentations and discussions, several long-lasting changes have been implemented in the hospitals.
Journal club
We hold a monthly journal club where our residents learn to critically evaluate academic and research articles involving basic and clinical research. We designed our Journal Club based on JAMA Evidence-Based Medicine articles. We are constantly updating our journal club format based on resident feedback.
Board review sessions
Faculty organize board reviews every week by the end of the academic year to help residents prepare for board exams. We also do problem-based board questions in a morning report.
Resident as a teacher
Our residents and faculty actively participate in teaching medical students during their clinical rotations. Chiefs also run hourly teaching sessions for medical students weekly. Weekly, residents on electives are tasked to give a chalk talk to medical students.
Pharmacy & dietary lectures
Opportunities for pharmacy and dietary lectures, and it is an exciting new learning experience. The goal is to empower our residents with clinical pharmacology information organized by Chiefs, faculty, and pharmacists and obtain information on dietary guidelines for admitted patients.
Pharmacy teaching rounds
We have also initiated pharmacy teaching rounds during ward rounds. The purpose is to do small teaching sessions and apply clinical pharmacology during medicine rounds.
Simulation center
The simulation curriculum allows residents to practice procedures such as central lines, paracentesis, thoracentesis, intubation, etc., to develop their skills. We also run mock code blues, rapid responses, clinical scenarios, and more.
Online library access
Our residents have access to a vast majority of online journals and books through our UCF College of Medicine's Health Sciences Library, which is 98 percent digital. The library provides residents with assistance and support in their academic studies and research. While at HCA Florida Fort Walton-Destin Hospital, the residents and students also have access to an online library.