Welcome from the Program Director

I am delighted by your interest in our Medicine Residency Training Program at Boston University School of Medicine and Boston Medical Center (BMC). The Residency Training Program is great source of pride for our department. Throughout the department’s storied history, the training program has been characterized by an extraordinary combination of empowering clinical experiences, the privilege of caring for a very diverse patient population, a compelling social mission, and outstanding academic programs in one of the country’s leading research-intensive departments of medicine.

Our residency training program is comprised of a categorical program, a primary care program, and a preliminary program. As you learn about the specific features of our program, I hope you will appreciate two particularly compelling aspects.

First, the training environment at Boston Medical Center, VA Boston Healthcare System, and associated neighborhood health centers provide a remarkable opportunity to provide care for a patient population that includes individuals from a broad range of socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds, as well as patients presenting for routine care and patients referred for advanced tertiary care. Boston Medical Center is one of the fastest growing academic health centers in Boston over the past five years and a national model for a successful merger of a public and private hospital. A large majority of the patients on the inpatient medical service at BMC are admitted through the Emergency Department-the busiest E.D. in New England. The acute nature of our patients’ illnesses on the inpatient service and strong bond with a single supervising ward attending creates a powerful inpatient learning environment that has become less prevalent in today’s academic health centers. Our busy outpatient clinics are supervised by a talented full-time general medicine and specialty faculty- these include nearly a third of the “Best Internists” in Boston. In addition, our residents work in affiliated Community Health Centers that provide rich training experience in an urban community setting.

Second, our department’s research programs reflect our faculty’s remarkable creativity, mentorship, and influence. The department’s research funding from NIH ranks in the very top group of departments of medicine in the country. The department’s nearly 400 faculty includes more than 250 faculty investigators and over 100 Ph.D. faculty. These faculty provide an extraordinary breadth and quality of opportunities for scholarly and research experiences during residency training. I urge you to read more about our research programs at http://www.bumc.bu.edu/medicine/research-in-the-department/

As you learn more about our department, I believe you will discover that the richness of both the clinical training and the academic environment provide an uncommon capacity for our program to inspire and empower residents.

The overarching goal of the residency training program is to provide a challenging and supportive learning environment that enables all trainees to reach their full potential and to provide value and leadership to society. We strive to create a learning environment characterized by an attentive and creative collaboration of the faculty, staff, and residents. We have a long-standing tradition of involving residents in curriculum planning and implementation of change. The meaningful involvement of residents in reviewing the program has not only improved decision-making, but has provided residents with substantive opportunities to design and evaluate educational curricula. Our residents and faculty have worked tirelessly to respond to the needs of our patients and learning opportunities for our trainees, all with the goal of continuously improving the program. I encourage you to learn more about recent initiatives that are described on this website.

As you consider the attributes of a formative training experience, we urge you to consider the importance of inspiring and substantive clinical experiences, the power of integrating cultural awareness, inquiry, value, and scholarship into clinical decision-making, the influence of positive faculty role models who challenge your assumptions and catalyze your development, the richness of diverse patients and peers who foster mutual support and respect, and the impact of the department of medicine in improving the health of the citizenry. Every member of our residency training program is committed to cultivating and enriching these attributes.

We greatly appreciate your interest and hope the information in our website will prompt you to learn more about both our program and departmental community. We welcome the opportunity to discuss our program with you!

Sincerely,

David L. Coleman, MD
Interim Program Director