Career Development 

The career development elective is mandatory for all categorical interns and optional for other interns and residents. This month, scheduled in the second half of the intern year, is designed to help interns begin to plan for their ultimate careers.  Since every type of internal medicine career (whether research, teaching, or patient care) should be done with a scholarly focus, all residents will work on a scholarly project during this month. Each intern meets with their associate program director in the beginning of the year to plan this month, selecting an appropriate mentor and a topic for the month.  By the end of the month, each resident will submit a scholarly project either in the field of research, medical education, or clinical quality improvement.  Common projects have included research abstracts, IRB submissions, review articles, survey projects on medical education, web based curricula and clinical quality improvement activities. Time is allotted during the month for reflection on career paths and also for activities leading up to the fellowship application process or job search.

This month is deliberately placed in the internship year for several reasons. First, we believe that it is essential for interns to have a month that is “me-focused” during a year where they provide so much care to others.  Second, interns contemplating careers in highly competitive fields need to begin scholarly projects early in their residency to be able to be marketable for these fields. Third, exposure to different types of scholarship early in a residency provides residents with the opportunity to schedule more of these experiences later in the residency, if they decide they like them.