Teaching Skills and Faculty Development
All GIM fellows participate in the teaching skills and faculty development sessions. These are organized and presented monthly in a seminar fashion. Depending on circumstances, some prior preparation is expected or follow-up assignments given. Topics include teaching in the clinic, teaching on the ward, lecture preparation, presentation of research papers or posters, and leadership in small groups. Faculty development involves the development of personal statements of teaching philosophy, organization of a teaching portfolio, career guidance, mentoring, and survival skills. The sessions are jointly developed and presented by members of the division and of the Office of Consultation and Research in Medical Education of the College of Medicine. Plans to expand participation by offering the sessions to other fellows in the department are underway.
Clinical Opportunities
All GIM fellows practice medicine in a continuity clinic, either at UIHC or at the VA Hospital. There are numerous opportunities for additional clinical skills. Fellows can arrange directly with the GI endoscopy service to perform flexible sigmoidoscopy. Rotations can be sought in medicine specialty clinics for fellows who wish further training in specific medical problems. Fellows who wish to gain experience in fields outside internal medicine can work with the Fellowship Director to identify appropriate venues. Members of GIM are helping to develop a Women's Health Center and fellows can rotate through this medical niche.
Fellows may choose to direct clinical attention towards the developing field of hospitalist medicine. Faculty members from GIM now supervise half of the medicine residency general ward experiences and a member of the division directs an active hospitalist program. Over a two-year period, enough experiences in hospitalist services can be gained to justifiably approach academic centers with credentials as a hospitalist. Similarly, a fellow interested in consultative general medicine can participate in the active General Medicine Consult Service.
All fellow continuity clinics function semi-autonomously with faculty interaction and advice readily available. Activity in other clinics or inpatient rotations occurs under varying degrees of supervision depending on the circumstances.
In addition to teaching assignments, fellows pursuing a clinician educator track can expect to be in clinics or on wards 50% time or more.
The Summer Seminar in Patient-Oriented Research
This six-week intensive summer seminar introduces fellows to the fundamentals of clinical research methodology and data analysis. It is divided into a didactic section and a data analysis section. The overall objective of the didactic section of the course is to familiarize fellows with basic design and measurement issues in clinical research. The data analysis portion of the class covers basic principles of data management and analysis, SAS statistical software, and collaborative research in a "hands-on" environment.
The Seminar in Clinical Research
The Seminar in Clinical Research provides a forum for presenting and discussing ongoing research projects and methodology in patient-oriented research. Assigned readings are drawn from contemporary literature and works in progress of participants and guest speakers from various disciplines. Topics vary from semester to semester, depending on the interests and research needs of the participants. Relevant topics include: NIH and federal funding process, obtaining pilot grants, writing and speaking skills, adjustments for comorbidity, clinical guideline implementation, qualitative methods, and issues in quality improvement, among others. For more information, click here.
Ethics
The Division of General Internal Medicine offers several opportunities for fellows to engage in meaningful discussion about ethics topics.
Biomedical Ethics Journal Club
The Journal Club meets once a month. Its goals are to foster interest in and knowledge of key topics in biomedical ethics, and to provide an open forum for discussion of issues related to clinical research ethics in an interdisciplinary environment.
Seminar in the Ethical and Legal Issues in Clinical Research
(in development). Specifically designed for clinical researchers, this course will fulfill the ethics requirements for T32 grants and other NIH training grants. Topics to be covered include: informed consent, confidentiality and privacy, conflicts of interest, the proper gathering, interpretation and retention of data, plagiarism, scientific misconduct, guidelines for responsibly determining authorship, issues in genetic research, the allocation of scarce medical resources, cross-cultural issues, "End of life" concerns, and legal and regulatory matters.
House Staff Curriculum in Clinical Medical Ethics
Sponsored by the Department of Internal Medicine and the Program in Biomedical Ethics, physician-ethicist Lauris Kaldjian, M.D. directs a series of monthly noontime conferences in clinical ethics. He is currently assisted by co-director Robert Canady, M.D., resident in internal medicine. These sessions are case-based, interactive, and accompanied by didactic presentations. Topics pertain to broad issues in clinical medical ethics and are oriented to the practical realities faced by physicians-in-training. Topics covered thus far include end-of-life issues, "futility", ethics in clinical education, treatment refusal, persistent vegetative state, and physician impairment. House staff are encouraged to suggest additional topics and to present patient cases from their own experience in order to make these conferences as current and relevant as possible.
|
