Internal Medicine Oakland - Academic Half Day, Curriculum & Rotation Schedule

Categorical Intern Year

18-19 weeks – General Medicine Wards (includes 2 weeks of ‘R2 Prep’ designed specifically as preparatory rotations to transition into the PGY-2 role)
8 weeks – ICU/Coronary Care Unit
3 weeks – Night Float Cross-cover
3 weeks – Continuity Clinic (dedicated full immersion weeks in addition to regular half-day clinics)
2 weeks – Infectious Disease
2 weeks – GI
2 weeks – Cardiology
6 weeks – Ambulatory & Endocrine
4-6 weeks – Elective Rotations
3 weeks – Vacation (+ an additional ‘Reading Week’)
(Categorical interns do not have continuity clinic while they are on wards, ICU, or night float, but will have continuity clinics on all other rotations and average clinic one half-day per week for the year)

Preliminary Intern Year
17-19 weeks – General Medicine Wards
9-10 weeks – ICU / Coronary Care Unit
2-3 weeks – Cardiology
4 weeks – Night Float Cross-cover
15-17 weeks – Elective Rotations
3 weeks – Vacation
(Preliminary interns do not adopt a continuity clinic panel)

8 weeks – General Medicine Wards
4-5 weeks – ICU / Coronary Care Unit
4 weeks – Night Float Admitting
14-16 weeks – Core Subspecialty Rotations (Cardiology, GI, Palliative Care, Renal, Neuro, Oncology)
4 weeks – Continuity Clinic immersion
2 weeks – Emergency Medicine
4 weeks – Ambulatory Medicine
2 weeks – Ambulatory Systems / Quality Improvement
5 weeks – Elective Rotations
4 weeks – Vacation
(PGY-2 residents do not have continuity clinic while they are on wards, ICU, or night float, but will otherwise have one to two half-days of continuity clinic per week. Core Subspecialty Rotations include outpatient and inpatient experiences.)

8-9 weeks – General Medicine Wards
4-5 weeks – ICU / Coronary Care Unit
3 weeks – Continuity Clinic immersion
15-16 weeks – Core Subspecialty Rotations (Hematology / Oncology, Pulmonary, Rheumatology, Neurology, Geriatrics, Perioperative Med)
4 weeks – Community Health
2 weeks – Emergency Medicine
2 weeks – Ambulatory non-IM specialty clinics
8-9 weeks – Elective Rotations
4 weeks – Vacation
(PGY-3 residents will not have continuity clinic while they are on wards or ICU, but will otherwise have one to two half days of continuity clinic per week. PGY-3 residents’ Night float is limited to only a few evenings over the course of the year. Core Subspecialty Rotations include ambulatory and inpatient experiences.)

Wards

On our inpatient ward medicine services, you will take care of everything under the sun. In addition to “bread and butter” medicine our recent cases include: CJD, paraneoplastic anti-GAD neuropathy, Rocky Mountain Spotted fever, tuberculosis, sarcoidosis, syphilis, malaria, Dengue fever, babesiosis, and silicosis, to name a few.

Ward Team details:

• 4 teams with 1 resident, 2 interns, sub-intern, 3^rd-year medical student
• team caps are 14 medicine patients, 7 per intern
• incredibly diverse patient population and case mix

Our ward experiences prioritize:

• resident autonomy
• bedside rounds with a patient-centered focus
• dedicated teaching faculty
• physical diagnosis including point-of-care ultrasound curriculum

Residents interested in Hospitalist careers will work with the Program Director, Dr. Baudendistel, and Assistant Program Directors, Drs. Ingraham and Gangopadhyay. Dr. Baudendistel is a former Deputy Editor of the Journal of Hospital Medicine and served as the Chair of the Society of Hospital Medicine’s National Ethics Committee. Dr. Ingraham is an annual instructor in Point-of-Care Ultrasound at national Hospitalist meetings and at ACP. Dr. Ingraham leads our residency’s KORE Pathway in Hospital Medicine.

Critical Care

ICU consists of 2 teams of 3 led by an R2 or R3, with a dedicated Intensivist for each team. The Intensivists are present in the hospital 24 hours per day every day of the year to support you!

The Critical Care rotation has been a pillar of team-based teaching and ICU faculty have been honored with many teaching awards over the years.

Ultrasound curriculum, Procedure Clinic, and Simulation Room

• Simulation training in thoracenteses, paracenteses, lumbar punctures, and central venous catheter placement
• All interns rotate through Procedure Clinic
• Training in critical events/ rapid response/ code blue scenarios using “Sim-man 3G” and other models
• Point-of-care ultrasound curriculum for cardiopulmonary diagnosis, to guide procedures, and for ambulatory medicine

All residents rotate through the core internal medicine specialties including:

In 2020, we implemented a new rotation in Geriatrics with our Oakland community partner, Center for Elders Independence where residents learn the PACE model (Program of All-inclusive Care).

We have a robust ambulatory experience which highlight the needs of our diverse urban patient population. Kaiser Oakland launched the first HIV and LGBTQ and Transgender clinics in Northern California Kaiser decades ago, and we continue to take pride in optimizing the health of all the incredibly diverse individuals who live in the East Bay.

Residents have a true Continuity Clinic experience over 3 years and are the Primary Care doctor for 100-200 patients. There are on-site attendings available and our preceptors do not have other responsibilities while in the teaching clinic so they can focus solely on teaching residents. Residents care for their patients at a dedicated teaching module where they are mentored by our teaching faculty and have access to on-site roving dermatology, diabetes specialty PharmDs and behavioral medicine specialists. Residents also have access to real-time consultation with all specialties.

Our residents care for patients at Community Clinics including the Oakland-based Center for Elder Independence, Malta Free Clinic of Oakland, and perform advocacy work for our most vulnerable community members at BOSS (Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency). Additional elective rotations are available at other community clinics such as La Clinica de La Raza and Asian Health Services.

Kaiser Oakland residents are provided individual laptops and smartphones enabling them to manage patients in person, via video visit technology, or via telemedicine.

Residents also rotate through outpatient clinics as part of their core Internal Medicine Subspecialty rotations in GI, Neurology, Heme-Onc, Palliative Medicine, Rheumatology, Geriatrics, Endocrinology, and Pulmonary. Our residents learn to perform joint injections and have exposure to handheld ultrasound in the orthopedic/sports injury rotation/musculoskeletal injection clinics for the evaluation of joint injuries.

A dedicated Ambulatory Systems block in the PGY-2 year includes curricula in High-Value Care and Quality Improvement. Under the direction of Assistant Program Director, Dr. Leslea Brickner, the residency program launched a Lifestyle Medicine elective which includes rotating with KP Health Education faculty, counseling patients on best practices to promote a healthy lifestyle including how to educate patients about plant-based diets, working with physicians in the Weight Management and Diabetes Prevention programs, learning how to incorporate behavioral med stress reduction techniques, and didactic offerings such as journal club and noon conferences. Residents are able to become Board-Certified in Lifestyle Medicine prior to graduation!

In addition, residents have several dedicated ambulatory blocks designed to provide experience in other aspects of outpatient medicine at Kaiser Oakland including:

• Addiction Medicine
• Allergy & Immunology
• Community Clinics
• Dermatology
• Urgent Care
• Geriatrics
• HIV Clinic
• Minor Injury Clinic
• Occupational Medicine
• Office Gynecology
• Eating Disorders
• Orthopedics
• Transgender Clinic

Residents pursuing careers in outpatient medicine may also receive additional training opportunities through the KORE Pathway in Primary Care.

It is our goal to promote equity in health care for all individuals, and to eliminate disparities in health outcomes. Community engagement is important to our residents and to our program’s mission. After community health experiences during residency, graduates have become staff physicians at several local community sites such as La Clinica de la Raza and the Lifelong Clinics. Residents at Kaiser Oakland participate in the following:

• Lifelong Over-60 and East Oakland community clinics
• San Quentin prison medicine
• Oakland’s Malta Free-Clinic for uninsured or underinsured patients
• Native American Health Center of Oakland
• Tri-City Transgender Clinic
• Asian Health Services
• Volunteer days at community fairs/projects supported by Kaiser
• Funded International medical rotations
• On-site Farmer’s Market (Kaiser Oakland was the first U.S. hospital to have an on-site farmer’s market featuring food grown by local farmers

During the COVID pandemic, Kaiser-sponsored Global Health rotations have been on pause, with plans to resume them once the global crisis subsides a bit more.

Learn more about our International Rotations and Global Health opportunities.

Learn more about our research and quality improvement opportunities here.

KP partnered with policymakers from Washington, D.C., and from California State and County Departments of Public Health to create the 2-week Health Policy Elective for our residents. This elective includes 5-6 site visits including to the State Capitol, along with lectures given by experts in the U.S. Health Policy, Health Economics, Health System Financing and Organization, Mental and Social Health in the Workforce, and Global Health, and concludes with resident-led small group presentations. Residents are shown in the photo on their tour of the capitol building in Sacramento. Residents are shown in the photo on their tour of the capitol building in Sacramento.

Starting in 2022, the IM residency partnered with Oakland based Public Health to create the new Social Medicine curriculum. The introductory week provides an overview of key social determinants of health such as housing, access to food, climate, economic opportunity.  Residents will conduct site visits to learn how Kaiser and local agencies are responding to the needs of our community in these areas. Subsequent experiences are tailored to the individual and can be project-based or include “boots-on-the-ground” work in the community.

All residents receive formal training in effective clinical teaching. There is a dedicated all-day offsite for this during the PGY-2 year, and during all 3 years, residents can partake in the KORE Pathway to Distinction in Medical Education. Ask Dr. B or the residents about our home-grown Kaiser Oakland Residency “PASSPORT” includes a variety of Teaching Scripts or schema which prepare residents to deliver 10-15 minute talks for their teams on a variety of clinical topics (Antibiotic selection, evaluation of syncope, approach to weakness, acid-base and ABG interpretation, and the list goes on!)

To refine their teaching, residents will supervise medical students on many inpatient and subspecialty rotations. Kaiser Oakland was the first site UCSF expanded their Longitudinal Clerkship model to and we host 8 UCSF ‘KLIC’ students for their entire third year of medical school. In addition, we are the only approved extramural site for UCSF sub-internships.  We host medical students from across the country for sub-internships and have affiliations with UC Berkeley, UCSF and the UCSF Joint Medical Program, California Northstate University, and Drexel University.

Residents can use their generous number of elective blocks to select additional experiences to meet their interests. These true electives are separate from the required subspecialty and ambulatory rotations. Elective options include the list below—but if you don’t see something, we take pride in sitting down one-on-one and creating electives with you:

• Global Health
• Research
• Teaching & Master Clinician Educator
• Medical Informatics & Information Technology
• Design & Innovation
• Medical Journal Editing at the Permanente Journal headquarters in Portland, Oregon
• Medical Journalism at ABC News
• Complementary and Alternative Medicine
• Allergy and Immunology
• Addiction Medicine and Recovery
• Radiology & Interventional Radiology
• Anesthesiology
• Psychiatry
• Gynecology and Women’s Health
• Podiatry
• Lab Medicine & Pathology
• Radiation Oncology
• La Salud Permanente elective (for more information, go here

The Kaiser Oakland Internal Medicine residency pays for:

• • Personal iPhone loaded with all the necessary apps to access the EMR (No, you don’t get to keep your phone after you graduate!)
  • Individual UptoDate account to be used both on campus and at home, including on your iPhone
  • Board Review materials: MKSAP books and digital account for all R2s and R3s; NEJM Knowledge-Plus online question bank and assessment tool
  • Funding for R3s to attend Board Review CME course
  • California Medical License and DEA license for categorical residents
  • Funding to prepare posters and to travel and present at scientific conferences

  Residents also receive discretionary education funds which can be used to purchase books, journals, software, or for other educational purposes.

  We have an onsite hospital library with medical librarians at your disposal to help with research projects and presentations. The library includes free access to all major medical journals (including the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, etc.).