Strategies for Residency Programs that Improve Medicine Departments and Teaching Hospitals (original) (raw)

A n internal medicine residency program can be leveraged as a strategic advantage to a department of medicine and teaching hospital in the core mission areas of patient care, education, research, and community service. A prerequisite for success is congruent strategies and action plans of the residency program, department of internal medicine, and institution. To accomplish this end, it is critical to have an appropriate level of trust, support, and most importantly, ongoing dialogue. 1,2 This commentary presents strategic recommendations for maximizing the value of a residency program and translating that value to its department of internal medicine and host institution. These recommendations comprise a toolkit of strategic initiatives that will ideally spur creative discussion among residency program stakeholders. Each recommendation is framed by concrete examples of how implemented strategies can lead to win-win outcomes. These examples were primarily generated through direct communication with a national cross-section of residency program leadership and active faculty.