The fourth year of the Transition to Residency elective finds its enrollment at its peak. This year’s 34-member cohort included graduating medical students entering not just internal medicine residency, but pediatrics, anesthesia, physical medicine and rehabilitation, and family medicine, as well. This increase in enrollment brings with it increased need for instructors.
“More than 20 residents,” Matthew Soltys, MD, said. “This is not insignificant. A lot of them did it on their time off.” The clinical assistant professor in Hospital Medicine and designer of the TTR program at Iowa then tried to list from memory how many different divisions were represented by these faculty volunteers. “Pulmonary, Cardiology, Palliative Care, Hospital Medicine, Rheumatology, General Internal Medicine, Nephrology, Radiology, Pathology . . .” More than he could recall.
What this represented, Soltys wanted to acknowledge, is “the breadth” of support for the TTR program. No matter the specialty or subspecialty, faculty members believe in the value and the importance of the two-weeks’ program goals, to prepare Carver College of Medicine M4s for tasks and experiences they are likely to encounter in their intern year. Whether it is filling out a death certificate or having a difficult conversation with a patient or a family member, the moments the TTR focuses on are meant to be specific to medicine or related specialties.
Over the years, feedback from TTR graduates has allowed Soltys and his colleagues the opportunity to refine the curriculum, removing or adding areas interns “wish they had known before Day One.” In each element, a mix of didactic and practical exposure combine to give the students a chance to experience the events for themselves.
This year, some new additions to now-standard elements included psychiatric management of agitated patients.
M4s also got a chance to practice entering orders in Epic training environments.
They heard from a respiratory therapist and a pulmonologist on airway management, with hands-on experience using a ventilator.
As in previous years, sessions in the Center for Procedural Skills and Simulation (CPSS) gave students the chance to lead and respond to real-time events like Code Blue scenarios.
The CPSS also ran rapid-response events allowing students to think like members of a large, multidisciplinary team.
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