Bonike Oloruntoba, MD, took over as chief resident for Duke Regional Hospital and Ambulatory Medicine this month. Going into her chief resident year, Dr. Oloruntoba is looking forward to serving as a mentor and teacher, to contributing to the residency program and working with her co-chief residents.
As chief resident, Oloruntoba will oversee residents at Duke Regional and the outpatient clinics.
“At Duke Regional, I’ll be working mostly with senior assistant residents and preliminary interns,” Oloruntoba said. “It’s an opportunity for the senior residents to learn how to run a team. There is a lot of autonomy at Duke Regional, and one of the challenges for the senior residents is teaching preliminary interns who are not necessarily as interested in pursuing internal medicine as a career as the categorical interns.
“On the ambulatory side, we focus on the outpatient setting, teaching residents how to take care of basic primary care issues and transitioning patients from the hospital to the outpatient setting,” she said. “It’s an opportunity for residents to focus on other providers and specialty services and to learn how to take care of patients outside of the hospital.”
Oloruntoba said her approach to teaching at Duke Regional when she was a senior resident was finding ways to engage interns. Oloruntoba would start off by asking her trainees what they wanted to gain from the rotation and then, throughout the rotation, she would try to give trainees opportunities to see how they progressed.
“I think that a way you learn medicine and learn it well is through repetition,” Oloruntoba said. Though medical students and interns often want to work on unique cases, she said, Oloruntoba also encouraged her trainees to focus on more common cases, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and diagnosing and treating chest pains, so trainees could chart their progress.
“When I was a senior resident, I wanted my medical students to see at least two examples of each (common case) so they could see how much they were learning,” Oloruntoba said. “The first time they see a COPD exacerbation, it may take a whole day to do the work up, but by the time they do a second one it will be quicker.”
Oloruntoba said she has seen students light up at the end of the week when she’s pointed out their improvement.
“I think this is a better way for medical students to feel like they are getting better and building on their experience,” she said.
As chief resident, Oloruntoba will help current senior residents become better teachers as they lead teams of medical students and interns. She hopes to encourage senior residents and help them see teaching as an opportunity to gain new skills.
“I really enjoy serving as a mentor. I think every physician wants to be a teacher,” Oloruntoba said. “It’s great to see the growth and development of your students. I enjoyed that as a senior resident, and it’s great to see my interns where they are now – they are like an extension of me.”
Oloruntoba said that confidence for trainees, like learning to practice medicine, comes with experience. She likes to be honest about the learning curve and her expectations but also reminds trainees that she has been where they are, too. “Confidence comes with time,” she said. “It’s by telling them up front that it will take longer for you to work up a particular patient and letting them know that’s hard and that I’ve been through that. They will build up their confidence when they see how things end up at the end of the month, when they can actually tell the difference and see their progress.”
In addition to teaching and mentoring, Oloruntoba said she is looking forward to listening to resident feedback and making a contribution to the residency program. “The residency program collects feedback and evaluations from residents, and they actually make changes,” Oloruntoba said. “In other programs, being a chief resident is more like being a figure head. Here you can get things done, so it makes it exciting to see what our contribution to the program will be. The changes always stem from the residents.”
Oloruntoba said the support and interest in resident feedback is something that set Duke apart for her, and having the flexibility to make changes will make her job as chief resident a little easier.
One goal Oloruntoba has set for herself during her chief resident year is improving and promoting the program’s diversity.
“One of the things that attracted me to Duke when I came here as an intern is the diversity of the program,” she said. “A lot of the applicants don’t see Duke’s diversity, not just in the internal medicine residency program, but across divisions and departments. Improving and promoting diversity is something I really want to focus on this year.”
Oloruntoba also said she is looking forward to working with her co-chief residents Nilesh Patel, Coral Giovacchini and Aaron Mitchell.
“Working with the other chiefs will be the best part,” she said. “We all knew each other as residents and respect each other. This year is an opportunity to get to know each other even better.”
Oloruntoba earned a bachelor’s degree from Washington University in St. Louis and attended the University of Maryland School of Medicine before coming to Duke for residency. She said growing up she never thought about a career outside of medicine.
“The people I looked up to were physicians, and I liked what they did and was able to shadow them when I was young,” she said. ‘That was when I made the decision, and I never really thought about doing anything else.”
Oloruntoba completed her first year of Gastroenterology fellowship at Duke last year, which she will continue after her chief resident year. She is interested in transplant hepatology and said her first year of fellowship really solidified what she wants to do.
In her spare time, Oloruntoba said she likes to shop, and she tries to plan one big trip each year. Oloruntoba traveled to Zanzibar in April and said one of her most memorable trips was one she took with her mother to Italy and Greece.
“I don’t know if it was the place or just that I had so much fun with my mom, but it was a very memorable experience.”
Meet the chief residents:
- Nilesh Patel, MD, MS, chief resident of internal medicine, Duke University Hospital
- Coral Giovacchini, MD, chief resident of internal medicine, Durham VA Medical Center