Recruitment for next year’s class in our Internal Medicine Residency Program will begin soon. Last year, hundreds of applicants from around the country came to Iowa City for interviews, and we were fortunate to meet and then match with a remarkably deep and talented pool of candidates. Iowa’s reputation for rigorous training and for its supportive and collegial environment is growing, and our candidates reflect that fact. Recruitment of residents is one of the most important investments we make in the future of the department. I may make this appeal again in the future, but I encourage all faculty to participate in the coming interviews when asked. Many candidates request to meet with faculty in specific subspecialty areas and those meetings often factor importantly in their decision to rank our program highly.
Under the leadership of Dr. Manish Suneja, Residency Director, and Jane Rowat, Educational Development Director, our residents have access to an innovative and flexible curriculum. Their time at Iowa grounds them in the fundamentals in many outstanding educational venues in general medicine and our subspecialties. I am pleased to see that the current chief residents have re-instituted Morning Reports as a venue to discuss the management and diagnostic challenges of recently admitted patients. This makes me nostalgic as I recall my morning reports of yesteryear. Another important opportunity that both contributes to our mission to support medical student education and hones the skills of our trainees as educators is the teaching resident rotation. This rotation reflects our institutional strength in generating future leaders in medical education, and the feedback that I have received thus far is that the experience has been very positive both for the teaching resident as well as the learners with whom they interact. One of our residents who recently completed her teaching resident rotation reflects on the experience here.
Our commitment to education runs just as deeply for area providers as it does for our trainees. This is why so many of our faculty organize and participate in Continuing Medical Education conferences. The month of October finds Internal Medicine faculty running four different conferences and symposia. Progress 2017: Learning Together in the 21st Century has been held here for more than 30 years, emphasizing inter-professionalism while addressing pressing concerns in select specialties. A week later, Heart Failure in the Heartland will welcome regional physicians and nurses, as our faculty present them with updates in cardiovascular medicine. The Division of Immunology collaborates with the Department of Pediatrics to present Current Topics in Allergy and Clinical Immunology. This year, they will focus specifically on food allergies. October will close with the 5th Annual Quality and Safety Symposium. This year’s keynote address will be delivered during Internal Medicine Grand Rounds by Dr. David Bates of Harvard Medical School on using “big data” in clinical care. We hope you can take advantage of all these opportunities.
Finally, in a testament to careers dedicated to research and education, two of our faculty members have each received well-deserved recognition at the national level for their work. (A third is about to be awarded, which will be announced soon.) Dr. Allyn Mark was awarded the American Heart Association’s Excellence Award for Hypertension Research, a prestigious career-achievement award. Dr. Mark’s work, particularly on the impact of the sympathetic nervous system on high blood pressure and on obesity, has been transformative to the field. Dr. Peter Densen was recently awarded the 2017 Ron Arky Award from the Learning Communities Institute. Dr. Densen helped establish one of the first five learning communities in the country at the Carver College of Medicine, a useful tool in medical education. He still serves as Community Director for the Bean Community today. Congratulations to both Dr. Mark and Dr. Densen on these remarkable achievements.
