Program Details

Resident Assessment and Coaching Committee (RAC)

We are committed to developing thoughtful, caring, and competent Internists-Pediatricians.  We provide the feedback and coaching you need to become the best resident and career physicians that you can be. Each resident is assigned to a primary and secondary coach within the Resident Assessment and Coaching (RAC) Committee--a group of carefully-selected Med-Peds faculty who have close connections to the residency program and are known to be talented clinicians and supportive medical educators. It supports a holistic, timely, formative, and sustainable approach toward resident evaluation and development, focusing as much on identifying and developing strengths within each resident as on identifying opportunities for improvement. This committee also serves as our program's Clinical Competency Committee (CCC), an ACGME requirement* for all programs. RAC coaches follow residents throughout their residency, synthesize and interpret evaluations and other data, and help residents identify and achieve their own clinical and professional development goals. Coaches also serve as an additional resource for clinical questions and providing perspective, professional development, and connecting residents with other sources of mentorship.

Semi-Annual Reviews

Each resident meets with Dr. Aylward and an assigned APD--either Dr. Williams or Dr. Bhatt--twice a year to discuss and address topics pertinent to your development as a MedPeds resident. Semi-annual reviews help set clear expectations, reinforce the values of our profession, promote habits of competence, measure progress and provide objective feedback on resident performance, promote an individualized learning plan, and identify and address areas of concern. These meetings are meant to advance as the resident does, starting with interns transitioning into residency, continuing in the second year with becoming a senior resident, entering the third year with finding mentorship, scholarship and community partners, and finally into fourth year with job or fellowship guidance. These meetings also meet an ACGME requirement* on resident evaluation.

Twin Cities Med-Peds Alumni Network

The UMN Med-Peds Program additionally benefits from its vast network of alumni in the area who continue their clinical practice in a wide range of disciplines. Many alumni are primary care clinicians, Med-Peds hospitalists, some mix of the two, or sub-specialty trained and can offer current residents mentorship as they work towards their own professional aspirations.

Our Model

We value continuity clinics as much as inpatient and consult rotations. Our model maximizes residents’ time and continuity within clinics, minimizing transitions between inpatient obligations and clinic. We integrate longitudinal clinic-based quality improvement projects with team-based care initiatives.

How Continuity Clinics work

• Residents attend a full day of clinic each week while on outpatient, consult, and Children's Emergency Department rotations. This format supports continuity and acknowledges that patients typically seen in the morning differ demographically than those seen in the afternoon. It also allows for dedicated lunch hour teaching time. 
• Residents have their own schedule when working in their continuity clinic. 
• Residents do not attend clinic while on inpatient rotations, except for eight half-day clinic afternoons during pediatric inpatient rotations the intern year. This alleviates the stress of moving between inpatient and clinic-based responsibilities, improving teamwork and efficiency in both settings. 
• Clinic staffing drives our templated resident schedule system. Residents are split into clinic- and day-specific teams. At any given time, half of the team will be on an inpatient service, and half the team will be on an outpatient service. The team on outpatient service provides coverage and follow-up on patient issues for the inpatient team. This hand-off allows for the smooth flow of patient care across rotations.

Continuity Clinic Sites

The UMN MedPeds residency serves three continuity clinic sites, each with its own unique patient population and surrounding community.

Community-University Health Care Center (CUHCC)

CUHCC is a federally qualified health center and a department within UMN's Academic Health Center. It offers medical, dental, mental health, advocacy, legal, and other services, serving 11,000 patients per year. Its mission is transforming care and education to advance health equity.

M Health Fairview-Eagan Clinic

M Health Fairview-Eagan is a state-of-the-art primary care clinic providing innovative, high-quality care to a diverse suburban population. Founded in the 1990s by a UMN-trained MedPeds physician, residents rotating at this suburban clinic work solely with MedPeds preceptors. 

Center for International Health (CIH) and Midway Clinics

Schedules

Each MedPeds intern is assigned a four-year schedule template, indicating what type of rotation--Medicine Outpatient, Medicine Inpatient, Pediatrics Outpatient, Pediatrics Inpatient--they will be scheduled for at a given point in time. Templates are matched with continuity clinics, for the purpose of forming balanced clinic teams at each site. Rotation templates fulfill ACGME exposure requirements to each categorical specialty, as well as meet inpatient and consult/clinic requirements. 

Sample schedule

Each residency year is split into 13 blocks. Each block is approximately 4 weeks in duration, although certain rotations occur in 2-week increments.

Rotations

UMN MedPeds residents rotate at 7 clinical sites in addition to their continuity clinic. You can learn more about the sites on our Clinical Sites page. Here is a quick look at how each residency year breaks down, in terms of required rotations, versus rotations that residents have some leeway in choosing.

Tailor your experience

Physician Advocacy Pathway

Clinician-Educator Pathway

Global Health

• UMN Internal Medicine Global Health
• UMN Pediatric Global Health Track for Residents

Hospital Medicine Pathway

Primary Care Pathway

Equity as a value and a practice

We value and build diversity within the physician workforce and promote a culture of belonging. Through leadership initiatives and feedback mechanisms, we work to flatten the hierarchy and put patients and residents at the center of all programmatic decisions:

• We created an advocacy track with accompanying Professional Development and Advocacy Days as part of Paid Time Off, so that residents are permitted extra time away from work to engage in advocacy, not just educational conferences, in addition to vacations.

• We developed and are piloting assessments and policies to address mistreatment, particularly discrimination and harassment, from patients and inter-professional staff.

  Why diversity matters

  The benefits of diversity to teams and institutions are clear: teams composed of diverse individuals operate with increased creativity, promote cross-cultural competence, and make accurate diagnoses twice as often as homogenous teams.^1,2 Overall, racial, ethnic, and gender diversity is an institutional driver of excellence.³ In clinical medicine in particular, representative diversity within the organization (racial, ethnic and gender diversity reflective of the patient population) is linked to greater patient satisfaction⁴, improved patient engagement in healthcare decisions⁵, and improved health outcomes and health equity.^6,7

  Why belonging matters

  The Oxford English Dictionary defines belonging as “a person's membership of, and acceptance by, a group or society.” In human rights terms, the UN Declaration of Human Rights specifies the right to “just and favorable conditions of work” as well as “participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits” as necessary components of human dignity. In simple terms, belonging means everyone has the opportunity to fully participate in work and society.

  In addition to the principled view of belonging there is a practical one -- maintaining a thriving workforce and minimizing turnover are important to the health of the community and the economy. There is evidence to suggest that a significant amount of attrition for women and racial minorities can be attributed to discrimination and harassment, independent of pay inequity or inequity in promotions. ^8-10 We strive for a culture that allows everyone to thrive and succeed.

  References

1. Ely RJ, Thomas DA. Cultural Diversity at Work: The Effects of Diversity Perspectives on Work Group Processes and Outcomes. Adm Sci Q. 2006;46(2):229. doi:10.2307/2667087
2. Stahl GK, Maznevski ML, Voigt A, Jonsen K. Unraveling the effects of cultural diversity in teams: A meta-analysis of research on multicultural work groups. J Int Bus Stud. 2010;41(4):690-709. doi:10.1057/jibs.2009.85
3. Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). Striving Toward Excellence: Faculty Diversity in Medical Education. Washington, DC; 2009. members.aamc.org/eweb/upload/Striving Towards Excellent Faculty Diversity in Med Ed.pdf. Accessed July 15, 2019.
4. Cooper-patrick L, Gallo JJ, Gonzales JJ, Powe NR, Nelson C, Ford DE. Race, Gender, and Partnership in the Patient-Physician Relationship. J Am Med Assoc. 1999;282(6):583-589.
5. Saha S, Komaromy M, Koepsell TD, Bindman AB. Patient-physician racial concordance and the perceived quality and use of health care. Arch Intern Med. 1999;159(9):997-1004. doi:10.1001/archinte.159.9.997
6. Alsan M, Garrick O, Graziani GC. Does Diversity Matter For Health? Experimental Evidence from Oakland. Cambridge, MA; 2019. nber.org/papers/w24787.pdf.
7. Smedley BD, Stith AY, Nelson AR. Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care. Washington DC: The National Academies Press; 2003. doi:10.17226/10260
8. Corporate Leavers Survey 2007: The Cost of Employee Turnover Due Solely to Unfairness in the Workplace. 2007. lpfi.org/sites/default/files/corporate-leavers-survey.pdf.
9. Roberson QM, Colquitt JA, Roberson QM. Shared and Configural Justice : a Social Network Model of Justice in Teams. Acad Manag Rev. 2005;30(3):595-607.
10. Cropanzano RS, Ambrose ML, Kulik CT, Li Y. The Fork in the Road: Diversity Management and Organizational Justice. Oxford Handb Justice Work. 2015;(June 2018). doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199981410.013.27
11. Milem JF, Chang MJ, Antonio AL. Making Diversity Work on Campus: A Research-Based Perspective. Washington, DC; 2005.
12. Castillo-Page L. Assessing the Climate and Culture Around Diversity and Inclusion in Academic Medicine. Acad Med. 2012;87(10):1313.
13. Milem JF, Dey EL, White CB. Diversity Considerations in Health Professions Education. In: Smedley B, Butler A, Bristow L, eds. In the Nation’s Compelling Interest: Ensuring Diversity in the Health-Care Workforce. Washington, DC: National Academies Press (US); 2004:345-390. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK216014/?report=reader.