Curriculum

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The goal of the Duke Internal Medicine Residency Program is to train leaders in health care by providing comprehensive and outstanding clinical training to interns, junior and senior assistant residents in Internal Medicine.

When we recruit new trainees to our program, we see you as potential future faculty at Duke. We look forward to seeing how you might fit into the mission of Duke Medicine, and how your goals may actually shape and change the mission of Duke Medicine.

The clinical rotations and didactic curriculum of the Duke Internal Medicine Residency Program are designed to ensure that you acquire the essential core clinical skills, confidence, independence and professionalism required for delivering the highest quality of medical care to a varied group of patients, and learn the principles of health promotion, population health, health disparities, and evidence-based medicine.  
 
The fundamental learning experience is during each patient encounter, either in the hospital or the ambulatory setting. As physicians-in-training, patients are trusting that their care and your learning are balanced in a mutually beneficial relationship. 

Together with your colleagues, you will care for a large patient population served by the Duke University Health System. Your learning will be enhanced by dedicated faculty educators and role models working in our state-of-the-art healthcare and biomedical research infrastructure. The learning experience associated with clinical encounters at the bedside is supplemented with structured didactic teaching as part of the comprehensive curriculum as well as the acquisition of the tools and skills to facilitate a lifetime of learning and continuing medical education.

Strong clinicians, compassionate caregivers

Following the completion of the three-year categorical training period, the Duke Internal Medicine house staff will:

  • Become strong clinicians with the ability to comfortably diagnose and manage patients with both common and unusual clinical problems encountered in the inpatient or outpatient setting to deliver state-of-the-art patient-centered health care
  • Develop into effective teachers of medicine with their experience and contribution to the clinical education of Duke medical students, more junior house staff and peers
  • Learn key aspects of preventive medicine and health promotion. Recognize the psychosocial aspects of disease and the impact of acute or chronic illnesses on the individual
  • Learn to deliver compassionate care to all patients and adhere to the core elements of medical professionalism, humanism and ethical principles
  • Advocate for systems and structures that promote health equity
  • Understand the contribution of basic scientific investigations to our knowledge of fundamental mechanisms of disease and the translation to clinical therapies

The Duke Internal Medicine faculty are dedicated to house staff education, and the collegial, friendly academic environment at Duke nurtures the intellectual curiosity of trainees.

The house staff are encouraged and supported by the leadership of the Residency Program and the Department of Medicine to participate in scholarly, academic activities as well as research.  Individualized learning and career development planning is a cornerstone of the effort to ensure successful training in Internal Medicine and to fulfill the aspirations of the house staff in any ultimate career path chosen – clinician-investigator, clinician-educator, clinician-administrator, and more.

Learn about: Point-of-care Ultrasound (POCUS) Pathway