Conferences and Education | Department of Internal Medicine | UC Davis Health

Conferences and Education

A large group of students and faculty sitting around a very large desk.

Here you will find a listing of our seminars, didactic and online education modules that we are routinely using in our residency training.

On our 4+1+1 schedule, interns go to their Academic Half Day whenever they are on the 1+1 part of their schedule.  For upper level residents, on the 4+4 schedule, they have their Academic Half Day on the +4 part of their schedule.

  • They have no clinical activities scheduled for that Half Day, and thus it is totally protected teaching time.
  • The Academic Half Day takes the place of the more conventional noon conferences, and attendance is dramatically higher due to its protected nature.
  • It is a great opportunity for socializing among residents and faculty.
  • The Academic Half Day meets Thursdays mornings for residents, and Friday mornings for interns.

We cover a large number of areas of medicine, including seminars on distinct disease-specific topics (e.g. diabetes care, anemia, leukemia, ventilator management, Journal Clubs, EKG reading, medical interviewing, evidence-based medicine, cost-conscious care, clinical reasoning, and quality improvement, among others). 

We have a curriculum for the intern year, and a 2-year curriculum for the PGY2 and PGY3 classes that covers all of the specialties of medicine.

  • Periodically throughout the year, we do board review sessions in the residents’ Academic Half Day.
  • This year, we purchased NEJM Knowledge Plus for each of our residents. This is an excellent, interactive board preparation tool. It also has great rotation specific materials to prepare you for each rotation, including seminal literature articles and great review articles.
  • We have purchased MKSAP for all of our R2s each year to support their studying for the boards, but are comparing it to the NEJM Knowledge Plus materials this year to see if we will continue with this.

  • Grand Rounds is held every Thursday at noon and is video-casted to all hospital sites.
  • One quarter of these Grand Rounds are dedicated to case-based clinical topics, such as Clinical Solving Problem Cases, where expert clinicians work through an unknown case presented by our chief residents.
  • Once a month, we have our Clinical Grand Rounds, where one of our residents presents an outstanding case from our service, with the resident and experts discussing the complexities and learning points from the case.

  • We have a monthly Morbidity, Mortality, Quality and Safety Conference (MMQS) on Monday at noon.
  • We do M&M cases with faculty and residents over a great lunch, and we add in topics relating to quality improvement and patient safety.
  • We work hard to have this be an educational and never punitive conference.

  • Each site has its version of Morning Report, where Chief Residents moderate a case discussion on common and uncommon medical cases with faculty participation.
  • We emphasize the process of clinical reasoning using problem representation, illness scripts, and analytical modes of evaluating cases.
  • At the VA and Kaiser sites, some of the morning report time is used for great seminars on radiology reading, M&M, or subspecialist teaching sessions.

The Primary Care and TEACH residents attend morning report on Tuesdays at UC Davis and we do an outpatient morning report, concentrating on educational cases from clinic, to allow focused discussion on common outpatient problems.

  • We utilize the Yale Office-Based Medicine Curriculum, but mainly in small group settings.
  • We also use the Society of Hospital Medicine modules on Perioperative Medicine.
  • We purchase the NEJM Knowledge Plus program which has excellent online board and rotation preparation materials.

One of our Associate Program Directors, Carolina Candotti, is an expert in POCUS, and is part of SHM core POCUS faculty. She started in July 2021 and has redesigned our POCUS training, which now includes a longitudinal POCUS curriculum, monthly didactic POCUS workshops, didactic lectures and the option of a POCUS elective rotation for residents. Over a 3-year integrative longitudinal curriculum, residents learn to acquire and interpret focused cardiac, pulmonary, abdominal, soft tissue, and procedure ultrasound images. Ultimately, residents learn to integrate this information into their management decisions. One of our core faculty is also a Sports Medicine physician, and he helps with musculoskeletal POCUS education.

  • We have a dedicated series of seminars on quality improvement and patient safety topics, led by our VA hospitalists and VA Chief Residents for Quality and Safety.
  • All residents complete a minimum of 2 online modules per year from the Institute of Healthcare Improvement (IHI).
  • All residents in our program leave with the essentials of QI. Those interested in more in-depth training join our one-year QI Track.

  • UC Davis has a state-of-the-art simulation suite called the Center for Virtual Care.
  • Our residents go there for POCUS training, code blue, and central line training sessions. There are LP, thoracentesis, and ophthalmology trainers as well.