Ambulatory

A significant amount of the training program is spent in the ambulatory setting. The core of the ambulatory experience takes place with the Internal Medicine Associates (IMA), the adolescent and adult medicine center located across the street from Illinois Masonic. The patients who receive their care at IMA are as diverse as the community where we are located. We enjoy an ideal mix of ages, genders, ethnic backgrounds, and even insurance status, which closely mimics the patterns seen in today's practice of office medicine.

The goal of ambulatory training is to provide excellent and meaningful medical care to the patients, to learn how to screen asymptomatic patients for disease and practice primary prevention, to learn to diagnose and treat acute and chronic medical problems in an ambulatory setting, to recognize depression and other social issues that contribute to the presenting illness an at last, but not the least to develop excellent documentation and follow-up skills.

Residents follow their own patients in the event they are hospitalized, providing continuity of care. PGY1s will have one clinic session a week, starting in September. From September though December, you will be scheduled one patient an hour. From January, you will be scheduled a patient every 30 minutes. PGY2s and PGY3s will have two clinic sessions a week and will be scheduled two patients per hour.

Additionally, as PGY2 and PGY3 residents, you'll be working on a very busy outpatient practice (Union Health Services), covering a broad spectrum of internal medicine cases. Three former graduates from our program will directly supervise you. You will have the opportunity to do flexible sigmoidoscopies and broad exposure to dermatology.

The faculty has developed a comprehensive lecture series that includes evidence-based information for practicing general internal medicine. Over the three years of the residency, you will have reviewed nearly 100 up-to-date journal articles covering general internal medicine outpatient topics. Past residents have commented that this lecture series was very instrumental in passing their internal medicine boards and helped them in the real world practice. PGY2s and PGY3s also will choose an additional one-half day a week clinic in an area of interest (i.e. cardiology, GI, rheumatology, etc). Supervised by practicing physicians, most of whom are faculty at Illinois Masonic, this is an excellent opportunity to develop new skills and prepare for future fellowship training.