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Our Curriculum

Inpatient Rotations

Our inpatient schedule balances patient care with academic didactic sessions.  The inpatient teams have a schedule that maximizes patient continuity and allows time to attend daytime teaching conferences.  We train residents using MD/RN rounding for patient-centered care and have an on-site state-of-the-art simulation room (see below).

Residents assume primary responsibility for their patients on all inpatient rotations.  Our resident night float team provides overnight care of patients on the teaching services as well as evaluates/admits patients in the emergency room.

Ward Teams

Our ward teams care for a very diverse patient population with a broad case mix.  There are 4 teams consisting of 2 interns and 1 resident. Each team caps at 16 medicine patients, 8 per intern. The ward attendings are selected for their interest in teaching. In addition to our medicine residents, the Oakland OB/GYN and Podiatry interns also rotate on our ward services.  Medical students give our residents additional opportunities to teach and mentor.

Critical Care

The teams for the ICU/CCU patients are supervised by an intensivist and a cardiologist. The residents particularly enjoy the teaching from our intensivists and our cardiologists who have been honored with many teaching awards over the years.

Cardiology

Our R1 cardiology rotation at San Francisco General Hospital is a consultative rotation at a busy county hospital with a cardiac catheterization lab.  Our R2 cardiology rotation is at the Oakland campus and includes inpatient and outpatient consultations as well as ECG, TEE, and TTE reading and cardiac stress test and CT angiogram interpretation.

Procedure Clinic and Simulation Room

Interns perform procedures such as thoracentesis, paracentesis and lumbar puncture under the supervision of faculty in our procedure clinic.  In our on-site simulation room, residents undergo simulation training for central venous catheter placement and code blue scenarios using “Sim-man” and other models.

While on night float and during elective time, all Housestaff have the opportunity to work on task trainers to further refine their technique for placing central lines including practice with ultrasound guidance. We also have models for simulation of lumbar punctures, thoracenteses and paracenteses. Our campus is conveniently located near the Garfield Center which is our regional simulation center.

Code Blue scenario with Sim-man

Subspecialty Experience

Cardiology*
Critical Care
Endocrinology
Gastroenterology

Hematology/Oncology
Infectious Disease
Rheumatology
Nephrology

Pulmonology
Palliative Medicine
Neurology

During these on-campus subspecialty rotations, residents provide consultative services for patients in both the clinic and the hospital. There is no call and no weekend responsibilities on these rotations providing a balance of education and time to enjoy life outside of the hospital.

*Intern cardiology is done at San Francisco General Hospital

Hospitalist Electives

Residents desiring a career in Hospital Medicine can do additional electives to prepare them for the critical leadership roles of hospitalists. These include but are not limited to:

  • Peri-operative care
  • Emergency Room Consultation
  • Hospitalist block - “behind the scenes” (focusing on Patient Safety, Quality Assurance, etc.)

Outpatient Experience

Primary Care

New Clinic
Final walkthrough before new Resident Clinic opening

Our Resident Academic Internal Medicine “AIM” clinic is home to our resident continuity clinic. It is a state-of-the-art building which opened in May 2009! It is staffed by dedicated faculty with a passion for both teaching and clinical medicine. Our residents care for patients with a variety of acute and chronic diseases and learn to work in a multi-disciplinary fashion with clinical pharmacists, case managers and social workers. Residents are exposed to one of the strengths of our organization: evidence-based care of patients with chronic medical problems while emphasizing preventive care. Our patients benefit from a highly successful Chronic Conditions management programs to improve control of diabetes, asthma, hyperlipidemia and hypertension among others.

Our graduates are in very high demand for positions in the Bay Area. We excel in training primary care physicians in evidence-based medicine and culturally sensitive care. We have a fully integrated electronic medical record which prepares our residents for real time clinic practice. All of our residents have a ½ day continuity clinic and are the primary care physicians for their patients.

Ambulatory Medicine

Our residents can spend as much as 40% of their training in the outpatient setting. Categorical residents also have 5 blocks of ambulatory medicine over the 3 years of training.

These ambulatory blocks include:

Allergy and Immunology
Chronic Pain
Community Clinics
Dermatology
Diabetes
General Medicine/Urgent Care
Geriatrics

Headache Clinic
HIV Clinic
Minor Injury Clinic
Occupational Medicine
Office Gynecology
Orthopedics

Outpatient Neurology
Physical Medicine 
& Rehabilitation
Podiatry
Substance Abuse
Women’s Health
Young Adult Clinic

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Primary Care Electives

Our faculty mentors in primary care are selected for their teaching and clinical excellence. These mentors shepherd residents through their primary care training and many form a life-long mentorship/friendship with the residents as they proceed into clinical practice. We offer two additional electives to further prepare residents for primary care:

  • Primary Care Practice
  • Management of Chronic Conditions

Community Service

Resident care for patients in two Oakland clinics (Malta free-clinic and the Asian Health Center). Our residents can participate in the various health fairs that Kaiser Permanente sponsors for our community. These fairs offer health education and basic health screening in and around the East Bay. Kaiser Oakland also has teams that participate annually in fundraisers/walks/runs for AIDS and Breast cancer projects.

International Electives

We have a new Global Health program in Matibabu, Kenya that funds residents interested in pursuing a Global Health elective. Our residents can also design an elective in International Health to be taken as a one month elective during their residency.

Matibabu Program

We also have some experiences available for as brief as one week: http://somosamigos.org/ . In the past few years, our residents have done International Electives in China, Columbia and a current resident will be traveling to Taiwan in early 2009. Residents can also select and apply to participate with organized groups such as:

If you are interested in participating in one of these unique opportunities, please let us know and we can assist you in finding the experience that best meets your needs.

Research and Other Electives

Resident Retreat
Resident Retreat

We have a very generous number of true elective blocks. In addition to the core subspecialty consultation and ambulatory medicine blocks, each resident has 5.5 blocks of truly elective/research time. Recent examples include: a rotation at the Alameda Public Health department as well as rotations at UC Davis. In addition, four weeks a year for both preliminaries and categoricals can be spent on a research project/scholarly activity. Additional on-campus elective rotations in Allergy and Immunology, Radiology, Anesthesia, Psychiatry, Gynecology and other specialties are available. There is no call and no weekend responsibilities on these rotations, which allow ample time for reading and an active lifestyle.

Educational Funds

The Kaiser Oakland Internal Medicine residency pays for:

  • Individual UptoDate account to be used both on campus and at home
  • ACP Associate membership
  • Subscription to Annals of Internal Medicine
  • MKSAP for Board Review for all R3s
  • USMLE Step 3, California Medical License and DEA license for categorical residents

Other educational funds include at least $400/year for R1’s and R2’s and $500/year for R3’s - to be used for books, journals, software and other educational purposes.

We have a large onsite hospital library with free access to most major medical journals (including the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA etc) as well as smaller libraries in both the resident lounge and the resident continuity clinic.

Conferences

Daily Teaching Conferences

Case Based Daily Report

Residents present cases followed by an evidence-based medicine discussion. The inpatient and subspecialty focused daily reports are led by medicine and subspecialty faculty. All residents attend daily report and this time is protected to minimize distractions to learning. Friday daily report is for interns only.

Noon conferences

Daily conferences given by our onsite and visiting faculty keep you up to date on the rapidly expanding field of medicine. There are weekly subspecialty conferences as well as monthly Morbidity & Mortality and Quality Assurance conferences.

Weekly Conferences

Board Review

A highly regarded MKSAP Board review meets weekly and is led by a sub-specialist. In conjunction with the resident’s excellent clinical experience, this conference contributes to our 100% board pass rate for the past 5 years. Each June, an accelerated Board Review is led by Dr. Baudendistel* for R3s preparing to take the Boards in August.

*co-editor of First Aid for the Internal Medicine Boards

Journal ClubEBM-experience

The Program Director, Dr. Tom Baudendistel, leads all residents through an Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) curriculum early in each academic year. The principles learned in this course are then reinforced in the resident Journal Clubs during Thursday noon conferences where two articles are presented by residents and discussed with residents and attendings.

Chief Rounds

A second-year resident presents an in-depth review of an unusual or complex case.

Outpatient Clinic Conference

These occur before continuity clinic session and are based on topics taken from the Yale Outpatient Case-based electronic curriculum.

Special Teaching Sessions

Pathology Rounds

A very popular session of interesting pathology/biopsy findings that are reviewed with an attending pathologist.

Resident Peer Review/Patient Safety

Residents review cases with unanticipated outcomes or “near misses”. Human factors around patient safety and ways to minimize errors are emphasized in each case. Residents learn the process of sentinel event analysis as a way to identify opportunities to improve our system of care.

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