While we excel at our primary goal of providing great patient care, the Division of Inpatient Medicine has extended its objectives to embrace the full academic mission at the University of Arizona. We are not only involved in teaching medical students but also embrace the training needs of acute care nurse practitioner (ACNP) students, pharmacy students and residents in the practice of hospital medicine as hospitalists.
Our faculty members have won many teaching awards in the last several years showing our commitment to education. Our division is well represented in several leadership roles such as the clerkship director for fourth year medical students and associate program directorships for our Internal Medicine Residency Programs at the Banner – University Medical Center (UMC) Tucson and South campuses. Many of our faculty also serve as core faculty in the residency programs at both campuses.
Our faculty members have led and developed several educational and quality initiatives within the hospitals, such as the "Delirium Prevention and Treatment Protocol," "Sepsis Protocol," and the "Resident as Teachers Program." Our Hospitalists are actively involved in the curriculum development of our current students and residents.
Medical Student Education
Medical students have access to elective courses relating to all subspecialties within the UA Department of Medicine (see those marked with the prefix "MEDI"). Refer to the College of Medicine - Tucson course catalog for specific courses and descriptions. Current students should also explore related opportunities offered by student clubs (including the UA Internal Medicine Student Association). Learn more at the MedCats website (NetID login required).
Our faculty members are actively involved in the education of the third and fourth year medical students at the University of Arizona as well as at Midwestern University. In addition to the day-to-day bedside clinical education, our faculty members partake in classroom didactics, shelf-exams and U.S. Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) reviews for our students.
Hospital medicine over the last few years has gained momentum, and now represents one of the largest growing communities of physicians in the United States. Many of our students and residents wish to pursue a career as hospitalists. Our faculty actively mentor these students and residents as a part of our mentorship program at both hospital campuses.
To learn more about clerkship and sub-internship opportunities in the Department of Medicine for third and fourth year students, please contact Kristina Waters at (520) 626-1574 or kew3@email.arizona.edu
Residency Rotations
Inpatient Medicine is a core part of medical education and residency training. Our faculty play a major role during rounding in inpatient wards as clinical educators and teachers. We provide supervision in the care of medically complex patients with diverse ethnicities, disease processes and socioeconomic statuses. We also work closely with different subspecialists and surgeons, partnering in the care of post-operative patients, ensuring smooth transitions of care for them and their families.
Currently, we staff the following resident teams:
- Two resident inpatient teams at Banner – UMC Tucson
- Two of the three internal medicine teams at Banner – UMC South
- One night-float team at Banner – UMC South and staff two night-teams at Banner – UMC Tucson to support all admissions at night.
Our faculty are actively involved in teaching residents by creating innovative rounding strategies, conducting board review courses (five hours per week), guiding residents in developing and conducting QI projects, and teaching them bedside procedures utilizing point-of-care ultrasound.
Fellowship Program
We aspire to develop a full-fledged Hospital Medicine Fellowship program with an emphasis on leadership. That is because strong leadership skills among physicians are vital to direct a fast-paced, highly complex health care system as can be found in academic medical centers such as ours. We strongly believe that our hospitalist fellowship program will allow for the development of junior physicians to be an efficient, high-value hospitalist and future health-care leaders. The fellowship program has been approved by the Office of Graduate Medical Education in the UA College of Medicine – Tucson and is in the development phase. Look for it soon.