Culture of Teaching

We place our highest priority on recruiting faculty with skills and passion for teaching. Our faculty take pleasure in one-on-one and small group teaching and prioritize teaching opportunities ahead of their other academic pursuits. We continuously develop new and innovative approaches to medical education. Our progressive ward structure, our weekly theme-based noon conferences, and our expanded QI program are all examples of recent innovations.

Other programs include:

• Integration of evidence-based medicine into everyday teaching and practice.
• Close collaboration between core faculty, hospitalist-clinician educators and subspecialty medical staff for inpatient teaching skills.
• Point-of-care ultrasound curriculum, with multiple opportunities for hands-on practice including an optional POCUS certification.
• Specialized rotations and learning modules to teach medical skills such as our procedures rotation and ECG modules.
• Our Teaching to Teach curriculum trains our residents to be excellent educators for their peers, medical students and other learners.
• Opportunities for interdisciplinary care that allow residents to teach and learn from other healthcare professions in our medical home clinic and hospital.
• Preparing our residents for life-long learning by teaching receptivity to both giving and receiving effective feedback.

We believe in continuous improvement for our program, which means we value resident feedback and identify opportunities to further advance our teaching effectiveness. An open environment welcomes regular feedback from our residents about our curriculum. Residents share in governance decisions regarding curriculum.

Faculty Mentorship and Individualized Teaching

• Each resident meets regularly with their faculty advisor throughout residency to ensure well-being, personal, and professional success.
• We maintain low faculty-to-resident preceptor ratios in our continuity clinic setting.
• Collaborative practices have either a one-to-one or one-to-two faculty-resident ratio.
• Subspecialists work directly with residents on ward teams and subspecialty rotations, providing highly individualized teaching based on direct observation.
• Faculty support residents in research and other scholarly activity.

Subspecialist Teaching

• Providence Portland Medical Center does not have internal medicine subspecialty fellowships, so residents work directly with master subspecialty clinicians. Our residents on inpatient rotations have opportunities for advanced patient care, problem solving, and procedures usually reserved for fellows at university programs.
• Residents on subspecialty rotations work one-one-one with subspecialty clinicians. An experienced subspecialist directly staffs resident consultations, providing an effective experience for learning complex physical examination skills, clinical reasoning, and targeted diagnostic and therapeutic approaches.

Inpatient Teaching

• Work Rounds are designed to facilitate team clinical decision-making on assigned patients. Each team works with a full-time hospitalist clinician-educator or a core generalist from Medical Education. This blend allows different approaches to be highlighted and facilitates direct observation.
• Resident Report occurs daily and is lively, participatory, and academically stimulating. This formal case presentation includes a brief literature review prepared by a resident. All contributions are treated respectfully, and residents find the process educational and enjoyable.
• Subspecialty Consults are done by subspecialty faculty who interact directly with the ward team, allowing direct teaching from experienced and committed attendings.

Resident as Educator

• We offer a special certificate program called “Residents as Teachers” for learners who want to enhance their teaching skills and develop curricula to share with their colleagues.
• Weekly noon conference has a defined core curriculum.
• Second- and third-year residents serve as educators in Resident Report, which includes a case discussion and the presentation of an evidence-based answer to a specific clinical question.
• Prior to R2 year, a special two-part “Teaching on the Wards” workshop is held.
• Each senior resident presents a capstone conference to faculty and residents in a Grand Rounds format.
• Residents are often key contributors to medical student education on the wards, in the ICU, and during subspecialty electives.

Outpatient Teaching

• In continuity clinics, residents care for their own panel of patients for whom they become the primary care provider.
• Preceptor involvement in the ambulatory setting is intense. There is one faculty preceptor per three to four residents during continuity clinics.
• Collaborative practices have a 1:1 faculty-resident ratio and allow for a longitudinal relationship between a subspecialty or primary care faculty and resident.
• Ambulatory curriculum during continuity clinic blocks focuses on attainment of practical skills and knowledge in geriatrics, palliative care, behavioral health, population health, chronic disease management, and joy in medicine amongst other topics.
• Formal self-directed, on-line ambulatory curriculum helps to enhance ambulatory knowledge and skills.