Contemplating fellowship? Considering a career as a Hospitalist or in Primary Care? Interested in Medical Education? Med Tech & AI? Humanities? Lifestyle Medicine? Research? Patient Safety & QI? Check out the KORE Pathways: Kaiser Oakland REsident Pathways to Distinction! These immersive mentored experiences allow you to pursue your unique passions and prepare you for your career. These are optional “Pathways”—not “tracks”– think of them as collections of clinical, scholarly, mentoring, and other educational opportunities designed to help you explore your career interests in more depth and enhance your CV. You can sample from multiple pathways and are not locked into any single one.
KORE Pathways to Distinction include:
- Research/Fellowship
- Primary Care
- Hospital Medicine
- Medical Education
- Technology & AI in Medicine
- Lifestyle Medicine
- Medical Humanities
- Patient Safety & Quality Improvement
Each pathway offers:
- Unique curriculum with the ability to fulfill criteria for residency “Distinction” in that area
- Experienced mentor
- Career development
- Scholarly project opportunities
- Teaching opportunities
For example, if you are contemplating a career as an Academic Hospitalist, you might explore advanced electives in POCUS, surgical co-management, virtual ICU, and perioperative medicine, and the Master Clinician Educator elective, while conducting a QI project to reduce readmissions for heart failure and interviewing Hospital leaders . In so doing, you will have obtained Distinctions in Hospital Medicine and Medical Education.
And if your passions lie in something more unique, we’ve got you covered! Kaiser Oakland residents have completed rotations in Medical Journalism at ABC News in New York, Medical publishing (working alongside the editorial Board of a major medical journal), Complimentary and Alternative Medicine, Health Administration, and Strategy Development, Design & Innovation, mobile health, and the list goes on. We are committed to getting to know you as individuals and supporting your passions so you can step into the career of your choice after graduation.
Here are some highlights of the traditional KORE rotations:
Research/Fellowship Pathway
Mentor: Dr. Joan Lo, MD, FACP
Residents in this pathway will work closely with the faculty at Kaiser Oakland and our Division of Research to prepare for a career that encompasses academic medicine and/or subspecialty training. Our Division of Research consists of over 400 staff and a budget in excess of $50 million. Kaiser Permanente (KP) researchers have published in NEJM, JAMA, and many other subspecialty journals, and have a strong history of mentoring young clinical investigators. The Research/Fellowship Pathway includes:
- Dedicated research time each year, with the goal of presenting at a regional/national meeting and submitting a manuscript for publication during residency.
- Formal training in clinical research methods
- Kaiser faculty research mentor, including support from research project managers and biostatistician data analysts.
Many residents combine KORE-Research activities with other KORE pathways, depending on their future career interests. (If you are interested in obtaining additional in-depth training in clinical epidemiology and public health research, an MPH at UC Berkeley, you ,might also consider applying to our combined IM/MPH program).
Technology and Artificial Intelligence in Medicine Pathway
Mentor: Dr. Adam Luxenberg, MD
Residents will work under a mentor who has published in Med Tech to learn the latest in the rapidly-growing area of AI in medical practice. Residents will have opportunities to design mentored QI or research projects investigating the impact of AI on various aspects of resident education and clinical practice more broadly. A recent initiative explored how residents spend their time in the EMR, how this differs from attendings and from other specialties. Another is the Advanced Alert Management system, a behind-the-scenes risk calculator which harnesses the data in the electronic medical record to identify patients at risk for decompensation before they deteriorate and notifies the health care team.
Primary Care Pathway
Mentors: Dr. Chitra Chandran, MD, Dr. Nicole Tran MD, and Dr. Steven Nash, MD
You will be prepared for the varied roles of the primary care physician of the 21st century while you practice firsthand in one of the most sophisticated health systems. You will learn advanced office dermatology (including cryotherapy, dermoscopy, and telederm), management of musculoskeletal disorders (including joint aspirations and injections), office gynecology, use of ultrasound in outpatient medicine, chronic condition management of populations, and optimal uses of technology (including secure messaging, telemedicine and video visits). You can also become board-certified in Lifestyle Medicine during residency. The Primary Care Pathway includes:
- Strong mentorship in a clinic replete with preceptors with varied clinical interests (weight management, gender-affirming care, geriatrics, young adult, chronic conditions management, leadership, etc.)
- Experience leading 360-degree clinic teams which include Diabetic Care managers, Clinical Pharmacists, and Behavioral Medicine specialists
- Electives in sports medicine, health education, dermatology, community health, POCUS, pre-operative medicine, teaching in the outpatient setting, health policy, women’s health, ambulatory surgical specialties, to name a few
- Quality Improvement: recent projects include improving screening for latent TB in immigrant populations; improving skincare for common skin conditions on the skin of color; reducing disparities in cancer screening
- Committee opportunities: Pharmacy and Therapeutics, Peer Review, Program Evaluation Committee for Outpatient Curriculum
- Mentored research, QI, or educational project in Primary Care
Hospital Medicine Pathway
Mentors: Dr. Aubrey Ingraham, MD, and Dr. Aditya Gangopadhyay, MD
Kaiser Oakland was an early adopter of the Hospitalist model dating back to the 1990s. The Hospitalist division includes over 60 faculty members, many of whom are active in local and national Society of Hospital Medicine activities. Assistant Program Director Dr. Aubrey Ingraham, MD, is an instructor in SHM’s National point-of-care ultrasound courses, and Dr. Baudendistel was the former SHM National Ethics chair and a Deputy Editor of the Journal of Hospital Medicine. Kaiser Oakland residents gain proficiency in Lean Methodologies to improve performance, a process we call Patient Care Improvement Systems. Our fully integrated electronic care system enhances our ability to coordinate care across the continuum from the clinic to the emergency room, hospital, and nursing homes. Components of this Pathway include:
- Advanced Point-of-Care Ultrasound for cardiopulmonary diagnosis, for procedural guidance (LP, thoras, para, central venous catheters, IVs), and skin and soft tissue evaluation
- Co-management of surgical patients on the Hospitalist-Orthopedics, Hospitalist-Spine, Podiatry, Surgery, Head & Neck Surgery, and OB/GYN services.
- Continuum of Care experiences: ED observation units, post-discharge Bridge clinic, and Acute Hospital Care at Home are some of the unique practice settings you will gain exposure to
- Working with Medical Center leadership on Hospital committees such as Patient Safety, Quality Improvement, and Infection Control.
- Advanced critical care and inpatient sub-specialty rotations
- Interviews with the key physician leaders at Kaiser
- Mentored research, QI, or educational project in Hospital Medicine
Medical Education Pathway
Mentor: Dr. Tom Baudendistel, MD
All physicians are teachers, and if you have a special interest in a future that includes Medical Education, this may be the pathway for you! This pathway includes electives led by the Program Director to enhance residents-as-teachers skills and promote resident careers in medical education. Components of this Pathway include:
- Formal didactics in education: learn how to teach clinical reasoning (and help learners who struggle in this area); how to provide feedback; how to deliver high-quality presentations such as “chalk talks”, large-group and small-group teaching conferences; how to promote retention in learners; how to use gamification to enhance small-group learning
- Directly observed teaching opportunities: armed with the knowledge on best practices, you’ll then have many chances to apply what you’ve learned through teaching student reports, leading sessions for the UCSF KLIC students, delivering Journal Club and Clinical Problem-Solving conferences—all observed by faculty who provide you with detailed feedback
- Scholarly opportunities in Medical Education: work with Program Director Dr. Baudendistel and other faculty on a variety of options from Educational Innovations to original research to chapters in books or designing novel curricula. Residents have presented work at national meetings, including an award-winning innovation poster at the Innovations in Medical Education Conference at USC and a workshop at a national educators’ conference on Game-Based Learning in Medical Education.
- UCSF’s Clinical Teaching Scholars Program: all residents in this pathway can complete the requirements of the UCSF Certification in Clinical Teaching by attending the clinical Teaching workshops co-sponsored by Kaiser Oakland and UCSF faculty
Medical Humanities Pathway
Mentor: Adam Luxenberg, MD
Check out this pdf for a summary of the Humanities experiences you might enjoy during your residency with us!
You will work with Dr. Luxenberg to design a longitudinal medical humanities elective that aligns with your specific medical humanities interest. You will lead small group discussions in narrative medicine as part of the residency’s weekly pre-clinic Humanities conference. Your scholarly or QI work will be designed during early exploration time during this elective, and you will coordinate one residency community activity which emphasizes narrative medicine or art in medicine.
Examples of QI or scholarly work:
- Quality improvement project in palliative medicine using narrative medicine techniques to explore clinician grief processing
- Systematic review of visual art and its use in improving clinician burnout
Examples of Community Activity
- Create a resident group activity: observation of art a the Oakland Museum; field trip to the Black History Museum of Oakland; wine and art paint night
- Volunteer with an adult day program working with artists with disabilities
Patient Safety & Quality Improvement Pathway
Mentor: Dr. Nicole Tran, MD
Residents in this pathway will learn advanced PSQI methods by participating in medical center Root Cause analysis of sentinel events, Peer Review, and through mentored didactics to learn Plan-Do-Study-Act small tests of change, Six Sigma, A3, Fishbone analysis, and Lean methodologies. Residents will take part in mentored QI projects and co-facilitate didactic conferences in PSQI under the mentorship of Dr. Tran who has been leading PSQI activities for over a decade. Under Dr. Tran’s guidance, many residents have presented or published their projects, further enhancing their resumes for future fellowship and job placements.