Residency Program 

Welcome to UC Davis Internal Medicine!

The UC Davis Internal Medicine Department offers outstanding training for residents with diverse career goals in Sacramento, California. We offer training in Categorical, Primary Care, and Preliminary Residency Tracks.   In addition, 5 third-year residents join and complete our Transforming Education and Community Health (TEACH) Track, which is dedicated to caring for the urban underserved patients in Sacramento County and to educating residents who plan to work with this population after graduation. Lastly, we offer 2 slots per year in our combined Internal Medicine-Psychiatry Residency Program.

We are very proud of our training programs and thank you for your interest.  I trust that this website will answer many of your questions about the structure of our program.

Before you click to the other pages, however, I would like to point out why you should strongly consider training at UC Davis.  There are many excellent residency training programs across the country, with dedicated faculty, smart residents, and advanced care systems.  UC Davis is one of those programs.  Here are our strong points that set us apart from the other programs:

•  A collegial, positive learning environment.  

In our selection process for residents we seek the smartest doctors and researchers, but we also highly value those applicants with great people skills, empathy, and compassion. Our residents are a kind, fun and dedicated group – the type of people you will want to become friends with.

Our faculty members share the same traits and values. UC Davis residents are key members of a collegial team without a big emphasis on rank and hierarchy. Residents feel respected, heard, and important as they care for their patients.

• A wonderful diversity of patients and care systems.

Sacramento is one of the most ethnically and socially diverse cities in America.  Our residents primarily work at UC Davis, Kaiser, and Sacramento VA health systems, but also spend time at Sacramento County indigent care clinics and Dignity/Mercy health system clinics. Each of these clinics have different patient populations and care systems that offer tremendous and varied learning opportunities. Our residents graduate with a well-rounded experience that leaves them ready to practice just about anywhere.

• A great place to live – Sacramento.

Sacramento is not usually at the front of people’s mind when it comes to thinking of sexy places to live.  But it IS a great city – it is a mid-sized city, has minimal traffic, possesses a wonderful downtown with a great restaurant and nightlife scene, and offers affordable housing (some residents even buy homes here).   Being at an altitude of about 10 feet, we have very mild winters, and sunny, non-humid summers.  The warm “summer” that allows comfortable, enjoyable evenings outdoors after work lasts from April to November. Throughout the year, there is easy access to Lake Tahoe basin and the surrounding Sierra Nevada mountains for camping, biking, hiking, and backpacking, and world-class snow sports.  We abut wonderful wine regions, being a short distance from the Napa Valley and the up-and-coming Amador County.  For sports enthusiasts, we have the Sacramento Rivercats (the most popular AAA baseball team in the country) and the NBA’s Sacramento Kings. We are 90 minutes from the San Francisco Bay Area and the beautiful Northern California coast is only a couple of hours away.

• Great EMR systems.

UC Davis and Kaiser both use Epic EMR systems that are fully implemented in all inpatient and outpatient settings. In fact, UC Davis was recently rated by US  News and World Reports as one of the country’s Most Connected Hospitals (only 156 hospitals nationwide got that designation!).  Of course, the VA also has a fully implemented EMR. This means that residents and faculty have outstanding access to information and communication tools to use in their clinical practice. This makes practicing and learning medicine easier.

• Supportive ambulatory training.

Many residency programs have poorly funded and under-supported continuity clinic sites.  We designed our General Medicine Clinic to buck that trend.  We have an outstanding telephone nurse triage system, a pharmacist-run medication refill system, pharmacist-run hypertension and medication management clinics, and our own Psychiatry, Wound, and Pain Medicine clinics within our residency clinic walls.  The residency clinic thus has great support to allow the residents spend their time learning by seeing patients and not filling out paperwork. Add our fully-integrated EMR and top-notch general medicine faculty, and you have a great place to learn how to care for our complex yet rewarding patient population. When you leave UC Davis, you will be ready to care for the sickest patients in any ambulatory setting.

• Strong primary care and TEACH tracks.

UC Davis has a long history of dedication to primary care, and we have a top-tier Primary Care Track that attracts some of the best trainees from around the country.  In 2005, the Transforming Education and Community Health (TEACH) Track for third-year residents was started for residents seeking training to care for the urban underserved.  This track has a strong bond to the Sacramento County indigent care clinics to provide for our region’s most vulnerable populations. Though there are “only” 21 residents per year in these tracks, their expertise and strengths spill over into the education of all of our residents.

• Intern research training.

All of our interns go through a 2-week curriculum during their ambulatory time to learn about performing clinical research.  This gives all of our residents a jumpstart on doing scholarly work to prepare them for their fellowship and job applications over the next 2 years. Even if you do not plan to do research in your career, this curriculum will give you fundamentals to better assess the literature and recognize the limitations of medical research.

• An innovative scheduling system – 4+1+1.

Residency programs across the country, including ours, have always struggled with the tension of residents going to clinic while working on very busy inpatient services.  In July 2012, we have instituted a new schedule, which we call 4+1+1, to try to eliminate this tension.  In 4+1+1, residents do 4 weeks of an inpatient rotation, followed by two weeks of elective, ambulatory block, or vacation (this is the 1+1 part).  Residents no longer have their continuity clinic during their 4 weeks of inpatient work. During the 1+1 weeks, they have 2-3 continuity clinics where they can care for their primary care patients and give them their full attention.  Between clinic sessions, our great EMRs allow residents to manage their panels remotely.  Residents already appreciate the ability to concentrate fully on their inpatients without the stress of getting to clinic on time.

These are just a few things that set us apart.  But the number one reason to come here is the people.  We really have a great group of residents, faculty and support staff that will make your training outstanding and fun.  I hope that you come to Sacramento and see for yourself.

Craig Keenan, MD

Program Director

Please call the Internal Medicine Residency Office at (916) 734-7080 or e-mail imres@ucdavis.edu if you have any questions about our program or application process.

Primary Care

Categorical
Internal
Medicine 

 

IM/Psychiatry

TEACH 

 

Who We Are 

Research and Scholarly
Activity