Our Medicine-Pediatrics program welcomed its first class in 1990. The class expanded to its current size of seven residents per year in 1994. In February of 1995, we added our combined resident-faculty med-peds office.
We have many things to thank for our success, but most important is the strength and commitment of our parent departments. They are equally dedicated to excellence in training, and exceptionally well matched in rigor, size, research dollars, and most
importantly in quality of residency training.
The UC Department of Internal Medicine has great depth and expertise in caring for some of the sickest and most complex patients in the greater Cincinnati area. Our residents are fortunate to be able to interact with outstanding educators from every internal medicine subspecialty and care for patients with rare diseases as well as “bread and butter” medical conditions. Among these outstanding divisions is a large division of General Internal Medicine, including our ambulatory faculty, hospitalists, and a number of research faculty. From this division come some of our most gifted clinician educators and mentors, including our Med-Peds faculty. These faculty supervise our residents on our general internal medicine ward services and precept in our Med-Peds clinic, lending their broad, global expertise to our residents' training experience.
Our internal medicine residency program, under the leadership of Dr. Eric Warm, is one of the leading internal medicine training programs in the country and has become internationally known as a leader in the innovation of internal medicine residency training. The internal medicine program has developed a ground-breaking resident assessment system, a novel knowledge testing program, and the resident long block for ambulatory training which has revolutionized how residents provide care for patients in their continuity clinic. As another example of the department's commitment to education, attending privilege is by invitation only, and this is based on resident and student evaluations. This dedication to education is reflected in the high American Board of Internal Medicine certifying exam pass rates (PDF), which are published for all programs on their website.
Our pediatrics residency at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center is recognized as one of the most rigorous and competitive in the country. It also enjoys commitment at the highest levels to excellent and innovation in training and education.
Cincinnati Children's is a world renowned children’s hospital, and so residents receive a remarkable depth and breadth of experience. Since it is the only regional inpatient children's facility, the residents also care for children with common, "bread and butter" pediatric conditions. As a testament to the excellence in training, they also enjoy an extremely high board pass rates (PDF) on the American Board of Pediatrics initial certifying exam.
So what does all of this mean for our med-peds residents? They have a wonderfully balanced training in medicine and pediatrics. Our leadership lives the philosophy of continuous improvement, and is dedicated to quality training for the residents.
Our parent departments strongly support the med-peds residency. We have a strong med-peds faculty group, and these more than a dozen attendings work closely with our residents, as mentors, colleagues in the office, and research advisors.
Some years ago, the trend was to increase the size of successful med-peds programs. At that time we made a conscious decision to be the best program we could be, not the biggest. At seven residents per year, we are large enough to have our own identity, but do not overwhelm either categorical residency.
Our goal is seamless integration, and quality of training, not quantity!
