If You Read Nothing Else
Our program is characterized by:
What We Offer:
About Abbott Northwestern
Abbott Northwestern is part of Minneapolis-based Allina Health System which is an integrated health care system comprised of physicians, 11 hospitals, and 61 clinics serving communities throughout Minnesota, western Wisconsin, and eastern North and South Dakota. Abbott Northwestern provides care for the largest number of adult patients in the Twin Cities metro area and has 700 active physicians on its staff. The entire medical complex is also the largest in the Twin Cities, occupying six city blocks near downtown Minneapolis. It includes the Sister Kenny Institute for physical rehabilitation and the adjacent Children's Hospitals and Clinics - Minneapolis facility. In February 2005 a major new addition created an integrated Heart, Neurology, Orthopedics, and Spine Hospital which also allowed us to have mostly private rooms throughout the entire hospital. A complete computerized patient record (Epic Systems) that integrates inpatient and outpatient records throughout our hospital and clinic system began in 2004. Alllina received the 2007 national award for the best care system implemention of an electronic patient record.
As a major affiliate of the University of Minnesota Medical School, Abbott Northwestern participates in resident and student education in Internal Medicine and at least 10 other medical specialties. Our Internal Medicine residents are involved in the care of approximately 125 of the inpatients on campus at any one time.
Visit Abbott Northwestern Hospital Home Page
The Inpatient Residents' Service
There are six general Internal Medicine Residents' Service teams comprised of a teaching attending physician, a G2 resident, a G1 resident and 1 or 2 medical students. Each team cares for patients in both critical and non-critical care units to provide optimum continuity of care. Approximately 10 percent of the patients on the teaching service are in critical care units.
A separate critical care unit rotation occurs in the G1 and G3 year, which does not involve night or weekend call. The team cares for approximately six critical care unit patients at any one time under the direct supervision of board certified intensivists. A comprehensive series of case-based tutorials covering critical care medicine is an integral part of this rotation.
The Faculty
The full-time faculty consists of over 50 full-time general internists and intensivists. Members of the faculty have received a variety of clinical teaching awards from the University of Minnesota Medical School. The faculty is also involved in clinical research and has an active publication record. Our part-time faculty includes outstanding subspecialists in every area of internal medicine. Many of these subspecialist physicians have been full-time faculty members of other major teaching institutions and continue to devote considerable time to education and scholarly activity.
There are 30 resident positions, 10 in each of the three years of the program. Residents come primarily from the upper Midwest and are equally men and women. Our program consistently fills its positions in the national resident matching program.
Clinical skills, attitudes and interpersonal skills continue to be our highest priority in selecting new residents, but USMLE scores and academic class standing are also considered.
View listing and medical schools of current residents
View picture poster of current residents
The Patients
Our inpatients represent a unique mix of cultures and socioeconomics and have a range
of health care problems that is broader than would be found in most other teaching
hospitals. Approximately one-third of our patients come from outside the Twin Cities
metro area. Another large and important patient group comes from the hospital's multicultural,
lower socioeconomic, inner-city neighborhood. These patients may enter our system
through our busy Emergency Department or through our on-campus outpatient clinic.
Inpatients on the Residents' Service include the hospital's most interesting and
complex patients, although common primary care medical problems are also well represented.
Our residents also help care for surgical, obstetrical, psychiatric and rehabilitation
patients with internal medicine complications. This important additional experience
adds to our residents' breadth of experience.
All of the Residents' Service patients are the direct responsibility of full time faculty physicians. Subspecialty physicians are consultants for these patients. Faculty attending physicians give residents primary responsibility for patient care. Faculty and residents maintain routine communication through progress notes, not through daily joint work rounds, although residents and supervising faculty are often at the bedside together. The computerized medical record has strongly facilitated resident/faculty communication.
Each resident team has separate daily teaching rounds with its teaching attending to provide
optimal learning for the residents. Our system maintains an ideal balance between
the need for resident responsibility and autonomy and the need for appropriate supervision
and education by experienced, knowledgeable clinicians.
Call, Admissions and Workload
G1 and G2 residents are on long call every sixth night while on inpatient general medicine Residents' Service rotations although the G1 residents are finished and leave the hospital by midnight. There is no night call responsibility during non-ward rotations, and G1s and G2s have one weekend day off per week during ward rotations. During a 24-hour long call, a G1/G2 team admits a maximum of six new patients. The G2 on long call is also the leader of the cardiac resuscitation team. G1 and G2 residents from each team are always on call and admitting together to provide optimum continuity of patient care and learning.
Besides one long call day in each six-day cycle, each team has two short call days. Thus, each team admits new patients every other day. On a short call day, teams admit a maximum of three new patients who must be in the hospital by 3 p.m.
An average Residents' Service team admits nine new patients per week and has a census of 8 patients, one of whom will be in a critical care bed.
Night Float System
The night float system provides additional nighttime coverage for the patients on the Residents' Service. One resident covers the 4 p.m. to midnight hours and provides cross coverage for all patients on the Residents' Service. This allows the long call team to concentrate on new patient evaluations. A second resident covers from midnight until 8 a.m. so that the long call resident receives uninterrupted sleep. Night float G1s are helped and supervised by the long call G2 resident and half-hour attending rounds occur from 4-4:30 p.m. each afternoon for the evening/night float resident. Our night float system does not shift workload to other parts of the residents' schedule and maintains continuity of patient care through the long call G2 resident. Our admission limits ensure that G2 residents also receive adequate sleep on long call nights.
Procedures
We believe that appropriate training and experience with core internal medicine procedures is essential. Accordingly, we have a required first year rotation for training in core Internal Medicine procedures. During this rotation residents also receive education for, and experience with, inpatient consultation Internal Medicine. For a more detailed description of this rotation, please select the following link.
Procedure/Consult rotation description
Outpatient Experience
Since our inpatient experience emphasizes the care of acutely ill patients and complex medical problems, we have developed our outpatient program to maintain the breadth of experience internists need. One-third of resident training time is spent in a variety of outpatient settings. Residents have experience in both of our Department's adult general medicine clinics. One clinic is on the hospital campus and the other is in the southwest metropolitan Abbott Northwestern Center for Outpatient Care (junction of highways 494 and 169). Each clinic facility is new and optimally designed for both patient care and resident education. The two clinics have different patient populations and residents spend time in both clinics.
The continuity clinic experience occurs in the ANGMA-Medicine Clinic which is our on-campus clinic where residents care predominantly for patients from our multicultural inner-city neighborhood. Caring for these often challenging and needy patients is an important mission of the hospital and the department. While in clinic residents are given outstanding supervision and education by the full-time faculty, with at least one faculty member present for every two or three residents in clinic -- a ratio found in very few programs. Faculty are fully devoted to resident teaching and supervision during their clinic attending time. Residents develop a long-term relationship with their own group of patients during the three years of the program. Residents learn to perform a wide range of outpatient procedures during this clinic experience. G1s see an average of 4-5 patients and G2s and G3s an average of 5-6 patients each clinic half-day.
While on inpatient teaching service rotations residents' clinic afternoons occur in rotation with the admitting schedule so that a resident is neither post-call nor admitting patients on a clinic day. The clinic schedule also assures that G1s and G2s from the same teaching service team are in clinic on separate afternoons. This allows each resident to have a clinic session that is uninterrupted by calls concerning inpatients on their team.
G1 residents have a separate outpatient block that includes individualized training and experience in general internal medicine at our ANGMA-COC clinic as well as experience in breast and vascular clinics. The rotation also includes education in chemical dependency and advanced medical interviewing.
G2 residents have an outpatient block rotation devoted to experiences in gynecology, urology, and orthopedics/sports medicine. They also spend time in the ANGMA-COC clinic.
G3 residents participate extensively in outpatient medicine during the various required subspecialty rotations. They also have an outpatient block rotation at ANGMA-COC which is a combination of dermatology and general medicine patients who have conditions that require them to be seen relatively urgently. A variety of other outpatient experiences may also be pursued during elective time in the G2 and G3 years.
Learn more about and take a tour of our on-campus ANGMA-Medicine Clinic
Learn more about and take a tour of our ANGMA-COC clinic
Conferences and education resources
The hospital's Medical Library offers an outstanding range of services. Extensive Web-based resources also are available for all residents and faculty directly through the electronic medical record. Residents have free and unlimited access to photocopying both in the Medical Education office and in the main library.
The Allina Health System has one of the most extensive and advanced computerized medical record systems in the country (Epic Systems, Madison, WI). All 11 hospitals and over 60 clinics use the same medical record which includes all patient information, clinical documentation, and orders. This system began implementation in 2004 and is now fully deployed and mature. Many aspects of patient care as well as physician efficiency have improved with this system. Residents have remote access to the system from any location.
Supplementing the computerized medical record, we have a Pocket PC hand-held computer project that we have been building since 2000. A specially configured Pocket PC is provided to each resident. Our major electronic textbook on the Pocket PC is UpTodate®. With their personal subscription to UptoDate residents also have on-line access both at work and at home. We also have an extensive collection of our own tools installed on each computer. These tools include a large number of unique Visual Basic calculators and clinical decision support aids.
Learn more about and take a tour of our Pocket PC project
Elective Time
One block of fully elective time is available in both the G2 and G3 years. Residents' full salary and benefits continue regardless of where the elective time is spent. Since all 8 core subspecialties of Internal Medicine are standard in the residency schedule, residents usually use this elective time for a wide variety of activities including gaining additional experience in non-Internal Medicine areas, working in a foreign country, or pursuing a clinical research project.
Residents who are pursuing a possible subspecialty career have the option of expanding their elective time to 5 blocks (1 additional block in the G1 year and 2 additional blocks in the G2 year) by replacing the two outpatient blocks and the neurology block with elective time. With counseling, residents use this time to pursue clinical research projects and additional clinical rotations in their selected field. These residents still receive all eight of the core subspecialty rotations plus the additional five elective blocks.
Three graduating residents are chosen each year to join the full time faculty for one year as Chief Residents. They are appointed, credentialed and salaried as full faculty physicians. They spend the year in a vital educational and clinical role with modest administrative responsibility. Chief Residents also have time to pursue scholarly projects or additional clinical training of their choice.
Fellowships
About 25 percent of our residents have pursued subspecialty training in a variety of fields. Abbott Northwestern is a participating institution with the University of Minnesota Cardiology, Gastroenterology, and Infectious Disease fellowships. Our five potential elective blocks make it possible for a resident to become involved in clinical research during the first year of residency and to have addtional elective clinical experiences in a field before fellowship applications are due.
Research Opportunities
A large volume of clinical research is conducted on the hospital campus, and many residents participate in these activities. Many residents have published their work. With the help of a faculty mentor, each resident completes a scholarly project before graduation from the program. With the availability of the five elective blocks, some residents begin research projects in their first year and continue the research in subsequent years.
American Board of Internal Medicine
Exam
Our graduating residents have performed extremely well on the Internal Medicine board exam. Our current three year cumulative pass rate is 100% which ranks us in the top 10 percent of programs nationwide.
Program Outline
G1 Year:
G2 Year:
G3 Year:
Evaluation, Feedback and Communication
Residents are evaluated by their peers, students, Chief Residents and faculty. They also are formally evaluated in clinical skill areas including bedside medicine knowlege and technique, ECG interpretation, and critical appraisal knowledge. All G2s take the in-training exam offered by the ACP. Residents discuss their performance at private semiannual meetings with the Program Director. Each resident also has a faculty advisor who helps with resident feedback and evaluation as well as the resident's scholarly project. A Residency Council (joint resident and faculty participation) helps deal with any performance issues of residents or faculty and with the overall design and execution of the program. This committee also helps insure that residency policies meet ABIM requirements and are fairly enforced.
Application and Interview Information
G1 appointments are available through the National Resident Matching Program. Our program code in the NRMP is 1330140C. The appointment begins with one week of paid mandatory orientation beginning one week before the start of clinical training on June 24. G1 clinical training ends on June 23 of the following year, followed by an additional week of paid time off to complete the G1 appointment on June 30 of the following year. Our program participates in the Electronic Residency Application Service (ERAS). A complete application includes:
International/Foreign medical school applicant information link
After initial application review, selected applicants will be invited for an interview. The interview consists of a formal introduction to the program, work rounds and attending rounds with a resident team, tour with a Chief Resident, lunch and conference with the residents, and interviews with several faculty members including the Program Director or Associate Program Director. We can also provide you with on-campus accommodations during your stay in the Twin Cities.
Robert Miner, MD
Program Director, Internal Medicine Residency (11135)
Abbott Northwestern Hospital
800 East 28th Street
Minneapolis, MN 55407-3799
(612) 863-6766 or 1-800-805-9928
E-mail: anne.m.klinkhammer@allina.com
