Conferences are an important time to learn with peers and faculty and to connect with friends in a relaxed setting.
Noon Conference
Daily conferences with delicious free lunch, held Mondays-Fridays at noon at Duke Hospital and broadcast via Zoom to our other locations, cover many clinical topics throughout the academic year. Topics for noon conferences include: diagnosis and management of common and complex inpatient diagnoses (ranging from antibiotic selection and stewardship to advanced cardiac support), faculty discussions of controversies in medicine, specialty topics for the internist such as radiology, dermatology and ophthalmology, town hall style meetings with the Residency Council and program leadership, and “fun lunch” social time.
SAR Talks
Each senior resident gives a noon conference lecture, often part of our intern emergency lecture series. This series is designed to prepare house staff for urgent scenarios that may occur while covering patients on an inpatient service. This gives senior residents the opportunity to teach our new interns early in the year and provide practical learning for our newest trainees. Topics range from chest pain, GI bleed, and respiratory distress to acute pain management and antibiotic choices. The lectures benefit everyone from interns to upper-level residents.
Academic Half Day
A half day of learning every Friday morning while on ambulatory blocks is protected from clinical duties for disease experts to spend time with our residents in a smaller group setting to teach them high-yield topics. These educational sessions are broken down by disease group based on the ambulatory threads to ensure the discussed topics align with what our residents are learning about in clinic in real time. Interns also have a second academic half day while on ambulatory rotations, designed to focus on key topics in primary care.
Quality Improvement/Patient Safety
The QI/PS conferences include updates on ongoing, program-wide QI/PS initiatives, as well as resident-led morbidity and mortality conferences. These conferences are planned by our Chief Resident for Quality and Safety and Dr. Joel Boggan, our APD for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety.
Cohen Conference
Named after senior faculty member and distinguished professor Dr. Harvey Cohen, junior residents present an unknown case to the program as we exercise our diagnostic reasoning skills and learn from our peers and expert discussants.
Curbside Conference
The Curbside Conference is a noon conference format in which experts from different subspecialty fields of medicine will be invited to speak on their diagnostic reasoning and approach regarding difficult or interesting clinical questions that arise on the medical wards by our internal medicine residents. These questions will be generated by the residents themselves. The goal is to provide a new forum for residents to learn a framework to answering clinical questions while increasing interactions between residents and senior clinical faculty.
Core Topics in Internal Medicine
Presented by faculty as well as senior fellows participating in the Departmental Society for Early Educators at Duke (SEEDS) program.
Career and Development Series
Faculty members speak to residents on interviewing, contract negotiation, patient interaction, conflict resolution, and other relevant topics.
Medicine LEADs
LEADs is our departmental Learning, Education and Discussion series. LEADs occurs on selected Tuesdays at noon and features Clinical Reviews and Diagnostic Reasoning conferences. Learn more about LEADS.
Medicine Grand Rounds
Residents and faculty attend the weekly Department of Medicine Grand Rounds each Friday. This topic- and case-based presentation highlights the science of clinical medicine to provide high-interest, educational weekly topics. Find recent grand rounds topics and learn more.
Resident and Intern Reports:
This conference is held Monday through Thursday at both Duke Hospital and the Durham VA Medical Center.
- Duke Medical Center Resident Report
Senior residents on the General Medicine service meet Monday through Thursday to discuss interesting or perplexing cases under the guidance of the Chief Resident and one of our senior faculty. Report also includes the identification, discussion and critical review of literature that helps guide patient-care practices. Quality improvement and patient safety cases as well as equity focused discussions occur here as well.
- Durham VA Medical Center Report
Junior residents on the General Medicine service meet Monday through Thursday to discuss interesting or perplexing cases under the guidance of the VA Chief Resident and a senior faculty member. Evidence-based medicine and critical review of the literature are a focus of the DVAMC Resident Report.
- Intern Report at Duke Medical Center and DVAMC
This twice weekly conference is open to all interns on inpatient rotations. This conference allows residents to systematically work through challenging cases while focusing on differential diagnosis and management. During this report, faculty also present a dedicated Intern Inpatient Medicine curriculum. A Chief Resident and a faculty member chair this conference.
Attending Rounds
Teaching rounds are conducted on the inpatient clinical services seven days a week. To prioritize patient-centered care and resident wellness/sleep, our interns do not pre-round on the General Medicine service. Our teams engage in discovery rounds, with all team members seeing the patient together in the morning. Attending rounds emphasize developing fundamental clinical skills, diagnostic reasoning, pathophysiology, and professionalism. Additional emphasis is placed on evidence-based medicine and on creating an environment that optimizes resident learning and patient care.
Night Sign Outs
As part of our commitment to resident education, the chief residents and assistant chief residents discuss admissions with the on-call teams. Night sign outs are an opportunity to reflect on the scope of problems encountered that day, provide teaching with critical review of the literature and assist the residents in thinking about complex cases.
Combined Medicine-Pediatrics Conferences
This six-part conference series focuses on topics key to both internal medicine and pediatrics residents and is geared toward residents in the Combined Medicine-Pediatrics Program.
Combined Medicine-Psychiatry Conferences
This quarterly conference series presents topics key to both internal medicine and psychiatry and is geared toward residents in the Combined Medicine-Psychiatry Program.
Professional Development Curricula
Interspersed throughout “+2” time, our program features several professional development curricula. All classes participate in the Brock Curriculum, a longitudinal series focusing on coping with the stresses of becoming a physician and development of peer debriefing skills. JARs attend a visual diagnosis seminar series at the Nasher Art Museum, a program developed by a recent graduate of our residency as part of her scholarly work! We also host class retreats, including the “Making the Most of Your Educational Experience” intern retreat in the fall, and “How to Be A JAR” as well as “Preparing for Careers after Residency” retreat for rising SARs in the spring.