Didactics

The education curriculum is established to cover fundamentals, objectives, and topics that are heavily represented on the American Board of Internal Medicine Board (ABIM), as outlined in the ABIM blueprints. The curriculum is also updated based on the results of the ACGME and internal program survey to include topics of residents’ interest.

In addition to the bedside teaching in the clinic, wards, and intensive care units, the educational activities consist of:

• Morning and Noon Conferences
  • Board Reviews
  • PGY-2 Conferences
  • Intern Reports
• Fallon Rounds
• Monday Academic Half-days
• Simulated Code Blue, Rapid Response, and Ultrasound Curriculum Sessions
• Journal Clubs
• ICU and Medical Morbidity and Mortality Conferences (M&M)
• Academic Enrichment Program
• Medical Grand Rounds
• Residents’ Medical Education (MedEd) Committee–led Activities

Morning and Noon Conferences

Morning and Noon Conferences are held on weekdays at 8 a.m. and 12 p.m. respectively. House staff (except house staff on night shift, ED, ICU, and cardiology rotations) are expected to attend and actively participate in these lectures.

Morning lectures are typically presented by a resident, moderated by the chief medical resident, and supervised by a faculty physician. During these sessions, a house staff member presents a case and discusses the topic related to the case with a focus on evidence-based medicine, while the faculty physician provides expert opinion and practical insight to the case presented.

Noon conferences are typically presented by faculty physicians or fellows. On Mondays, noon conferences are replaced by intern reports, PGY-2 Conferences, and Board Review conferences, for PG-1, PGY-2, and PGY-3, respectively. In the first two months of the academic year, the lecture subjects are customized to the intern boot camp and include lectures by faculty members and PGY-3 senior residents dedicated to the new interns.

Board Reviews

Board Review sessions are typically held weekly on Mondays at noon as part of the noon conferences. These sessions are led and presented by Associate Program Director Dr. Abbas Zaidi. The resource material for these sessions is the Medical Knowledge Self-Assessment Program (MKSAP) by the American College of Physicians. During each session, different chapters (grouped by specialties) are reviewed, followed by self-assessment questions from the MKSAP question bank. To aid in board preparation, during their second year the program purchases MKSAP review books with question banks for residents.

PGY-2 Conferences

On Mondays at noon, PGY-2 residents meet with our Associate Program Director Dr. Lisa Bajpayee, a pulmonary and critical care faculty member who also serves as the program director for the pulmonary and critical care medicine fellowship. These sessions are tailored to resident interest, cover various medical and intensive care topics, and include bedside ultrasound and ventilator teaching.

Intern Reports

On Mondays at noon, intern reports are held for the PGY-1 class exclusively. During the academic year, each intern will present one report. The sessions are moderated by the chief medical resident who also assists the intern in the subject choice and literature review. Interns are encouraged to choose a topic of interest to answer a clinical question they encountered during their outpatient and/or inpatient rotation, using the PICO (Patient/Population, Intervention, Comparison, and Outcomes) method.

Fallon Rounds

Fallon Rounds are held every Friday in the afternoon. These are conferences dedicated to the interns with the aim of learning how to present a clinical case, formulate a differential diagnosis, and use the critical thinking that will lead to the most probable diagnosis. These are led by Dr. Paul Fallon, a core faculty member and a member of the Clinical Competency Committee, with the help of the chief medical residents.

Monday Academic Half-Days

Academic half-day sessions occur on Mondays during the ambulatory block. During these sessions, a topic from PEAC (Physician Education and Assessment Center), a structured outpatient curriculum developed by Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, is presented by a resident under the supervision of either the outpatient Associate Program Director Dr. Abbas Zaidi or a core faculty member.

These sessions are conducted using a “flipped classroom” approach, with all members of the audience completing a pre-test prior to the session to promote active learning and participation.

Following each session, the residents also complete the post-test questions to consolidate the learning points. As of Academic Year 2024–2025, the modules covered during the PEAC curriculum changed from a one-year to a two-year curriculum to include additional modules, such as outpatient rheumatology, dermatology, HIV/HCV care, disparities in medicine, professionalism, and evidence-based medicine.

Simulated Code Blue, Rapid Response, and Ultrasound Curriculum Sessions

These sessions are held during the academic half-days, on Monday mornings of the ambulatory block. These include mock Code Blue sessions, simulated rapid responses cases, ventilator trainings, or ultrasound trainings that are supervised by physicians from other departments including cardiology, vascular medicine, critical care medicine, and emergency medicine.

Journal Clubs

Journal club conferences are academic activities designed for residents to learn how to analyze a journal article. A second-year resident will be assigned a faculty mentor as well a study design. Residents meet with their mentors prior to their presentation to obtain guidance in article selection, result analysis, and study appraisal.

ICU and Medical Morbidity & Mortality Conferences (M&M)

Each month, the chief medical resident presents the medical morbidity and mortality conferences as part of the weekly medical grand round. In addition, ICU M&M is held monthly, typically during a Wednesday noon conference.

A second- and a third-year resident are paired together and assigned to a pulmonary/critical care fellow and attending. Together, they engage in reviewing select cases to assess the presence of any medical and/or non-medical error(s) and identify opportunities for improvement while using supporting evidence from current literature.

ICU M&M is attended by both the internal medicine residents and the pulmonary and critical care faculties and fellows.

Academic Enrichment Program

The Academic Enrichment Program was established and implemented in 2014 for residents to strengthen their medical knowledge and prepare for the ABIM board exam. The program has traditionally used the New England Journal of Medicine’s Knowledge Plus (NEJM Knowledge+) Platform and as of AY 2024–2025, switched to the combined NEJM Knowledge+/AMBOSS platform. The program is tailored based on each resident’s postgraduate year and performance on the in-training exam (ITE).

Medical Grand Rounds

Medical grand rounds are hosted every Wednesday by the Department of Medicine. Speakers from various institutions are invited to discuss and educate on topics of latest clinical and academic nuances. The final session of grand rounds of the academic year is reserved for house staff research presentations.

Residents’ Medical Education (MedEd) Committee

The Residents’ MedEd Committee was established in 2023 to engage residents with a particular interest in medical education in planning educational activities and working closely with the program leadership and chief medical residents to hone their clinical educator skills. Activities planned by the RMC are various and include game-based learning activities (Medical Jeopardy, The Price Is Right, Escape the Room, Residents vs. AI, etc.), unscripted morning reports, and MKSAP question sessions.