Conferences

The Noon Conference curriculum is designed to cover inpatient core teaching topics that maps to the ABIM blueprint. This conference is held weekdays in-person at noon at Duke Hospital and broadcast via Zoom to our other locations. In 2026, our noon conference curriculum was re-vamped to be topic-based by month, and to also align with outpatient protected education time topics. For example, September and October are Endocrine/Gastroenterology topics. March and April are Rheumatology/Hematology topics.

 

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 medical students to upper-level residents.

 

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.

 

Twice per month, the chief residents lead an informal, resident-driven noon conference. These conferences are designed for more relaxed academic conversations about resident-requested topics such as AI in Medicine.

 

Many of our key inpatient curriculum topics are covered by faculty experts in all divisions within the Department of Medicine. Faculty are invited to speak on topics that are in line with ABIM curricula.

 

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. This happens monthly and is led by the chief resident for quality and patient safety.

 

Noon conference that is presented by senior fellows participating in the Departmental Society for Early Educators at Duke (SEEDS) program.

 

Several times throughout the year, noon conference time will be reserved for residents to review any key items of feedback directly with residency leadership or chief residents. This is an open forum and one of many ways we seek resident feedback.

These conferences are held Monday through Thursday at Duke Hospital and the Durham VA Medical Center.

 

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. Weekly, a “hospital medicine report” is given to SARs to update senior residents on the most relevant and changing hospital policies. Quality improvement and patient safety cases as well as equity focused discussions occur here as well.

 

Residents on the General Medicine service meet Monday through Thursday to discuss interesting or perplexing cases, learn key concenpt from core faculty, practice in simulation-based education, explore leadership directions, and engage in evidenced-based medicine and critical review of the literature under the guidance of the VA Chief Resident and a senior faculty member. Once weekly, there is a VA morning report which is focused on interesting overnight case presentations and is reviewed by the entire team.

 

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.

 

At Duke Regional Hospital, our residency educational curriculum is designed to support residents at every stage of training. Senior residents meet weekly for a dedicated curriculum focused on developing skills in clinical education, mentorship, and how to lead interprofessional teams. Interns also participate in weekly educational sessions centered on core internal medicine topics, with an emphasis on practical cross-cover scenarios such as chest pain, respiratory distress, and altered mental status. In addition, all residents and students participate in a weekly huddle focused on hospital systems, outcomes, and quality improvement. This forum provides an opportunity to debrief on clinical and operational challenges, identify issues requiring attention, and facilitate open communication between residents and leadership. 

A half day of learning on Wednesdays or Fridays 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.

 

Senior residents have protected time for board review a half day once a week while on any outpatient rotation. This is led by one of our senior faculty Dr. Phelps who has designed intentional high yield board review questions and topics.

 

Interspersed throughout ambulatory 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.

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 here.