The following is a list of commonly asked questions, but if you do not find the answer to your specific question, please contact us directly!

Students are often INCORRECTLY advised that they couldn’t get a good fellowship out of a community hospital. For those residents who have wanted fellowships from our program, over the past 10 years, the vast majority have obtained them. Recently, we’ve sent our graduates to Indiana University, Brown, University of Michigan, Duke, Johns Hopkins, Vanderbilt, University of Cincinnati, Ohio State, and many other outstanding programs. At St. Vincent Hospital, we start career counseling at the beginning of internship; we assess the resident's desires, help them solidify their choices during their rotations, help select away electives, assist in initiating research projects, and guide our residents through the application and interview process.

The most significant quality we look for in an applicant is the content of their character. In the application, and during the interview, we assess integrity, ability to engender trust and communicate clearly, and the desire to take responsibility for one’s education and patient care. We look to see how well an applicant fits within our Core Values, especially as they relate to service to the poor. While we set no minimum academic standards, the average USMLE test scores for our interns is substantially above the national average.

Our training program gives you a great deal of autonomy, more so than many other programs. On our ward services, the patients are yours to manage, with the appropriate supervision of a resident and attending. You are responsible for planning management, writing orders, following up on the results of diagnostic tests, communicating with consultants, and preparing for discharge. It’s not much different on subspecialty consult services, except that you will work one-on-one with an attending, rather than in a team structure. In the internal medicine clinic, you work as a private practitioner would, seeing patients who identify you as "their physician." The support staff and teaching staff facilitate and teach you time-efficient, cost-effective outpatient care.

Yes. Each intern maintains a daily volume of 5 to 8 patients on the ward service – plenty to care for and learn from without feeling overwhelmed. Consult services maintain a higher census because of the more limited scope of responsibility. In the outpatient clinic, volume increases as your skill level improves. Senior residents should comfortably see 8 to 10 patients per half-day session.

St.Vincent Hospital is both a primary care hospital and a tertiary referral center, so you see a wide variety of conditions. With a medical staff of nearly 2100 physicians, representing essentially all disciplines, just about anything can wind up on the teaching services. While we see lots of common diagnoses (which are necessary to prepare you for real world practice), we see some very rare things as well. Some recent examples include Henoch-Schonlein purpura in an adult, cholangiocarcinoma, Liemere’s syndrome, atrial myxoma, diabetes insipidus, pheochromocytoma, and many others. In fact, the only case of documented Hanta Virus diagnosed in Indiana was at St.Vincent Hospital.

Yes. Second, 3rd and 4th year students from the Indiana University School of Medicine rotate at St.Vincent Hospital. More senior residents will also teach junior residents and visiting students and physicians from foreign countries. Residents also present a conference and journal club each year. A teaching retreat is held in the spring of the intern year which provides an opportunity to learn basic teaching skills. Similar to other residencies, we use a modified version of the Stanford Program developed by Kelley Skeff.

Yes. We consistently fill through the NRMP match, with some of the finest students from the best U.S. Medical Schools across the country. We do not offer positions outside the match.

Moonlighting supplements learning opportunities while helping residents defray debt. We offer a variety of opportunities for Interns to take extra call within the hospital for pay, on services including cardiology, ER, medicine wards, ICU, and pediatrics. Starting in the second year, many other moonlighting opportunities are available with increased pay (house doctor for Carmel St.Vincent or a local rehab hospital, outside ERs, sports event physician, etc).

There is a growing need in the State of Indiana and elsewhere for the "superdoc" physician who has both the breadth and depth of knowledge and abilities necessary to deal with almost any situation (for example, a rural physician or Peace Corp volunteer). To meet this need, we created a combined IM-FM program. This program pulls the best curriculum and learning opportunities from both disciplines, but has enough elective time to customize training to meet each individual's goals. We have matriculated over 5 years of IM-FM graduates, one of whom (Dr Liz Roth) is on our teaching faculty. Interested students should contact Dr.David Harsha (317) 338-7600 or Dr.Craig Wilson (317) 338-2172 for additional details. The program takes 2 residents per year, but the resident will interact with over 100 other primary care residents during training. There is a separate NRMP number for this program.

Because we have a limited number of fellows, residents are responsible for essentially all procedures on their patients. We take procedural training very seriously, with competence regarded as a combination of theory and experience. PGY-1s complete a procedural simulation training workshop during which we learn theory and practice. We have an excellent set of procedural videos and computer-based training exercises. Residents gain proficiency at inpatient procedures, such as central lines, intubation, arterial lines, thoracentesis, paracentesis, lumbar punctures, and bone marrow biopsies. Outpatient procedures include flexible sigmoidoscopy, treadmill stress testing, skin procedures, and joint injections. Interested residents can gain additional proficiency at a variety of other procedures. Our department also has its own site-rite ultrasound which we use for vascular procedures as well as for thoracentesis / paracentesis. In addition, we have a glidescope for difficult airway intubations.

Over the past three years, we’ve hit 100% pass for first-time takers. Over the history of the program, we are consistently above 90% pass rates, which is well above the national average.

We draw patients from all over the Midwest. You will see underserved (inner city and rural indigent, Hispanic and Russian immigrants, Burmese refugees, Medicaid), Medicare, privately insured and managed care patients. We receive over 200 patients per month in transfer from other facilities. Our Hospitalist faculty triage these referrals, ensuring that the best pathology ends up on the inpatient teaching service.

On our ward service, you will not have overnight call tacked onto the end of an already busy day. Interns rotate to a ‘night float’ system for 6 consecutive nights during the month. A nurse practitioner joins the team to help your resident and faculty during this period. The intern will evaluate and ‘admit’ up to 5 patients per night under the supervision of a 2nd or 3rd year medicine resident, then discuss it with the ward attending. We have attendings in house 24 hours per day. The intern is responsible for writing all orders, planning and arranging diagnostic tests, discussing the case with consultants, assuring timely interventions, and arranging for discharge and post-hospital care. On-call interns also cross-cover patients for their "partner" interns from the other teams.

ICU interns are assigned a ‘block’ of night shifts also. In the ICU, you’ll typically admit 2-4 patients a night and cross-cover about 5-10 patients. The intern is first in line for all necessary procedures, including intubations, central lines and ventilator management. You are supervised by a senior resident, with staff available for questions at all times. You are also part of the hospital-wide code team.

All admissions to the adult inpatient medicine service (AIMS) are staffed with our teaching faculty. There is a small contingency of community-based physicians who still admit their own patients, but housestaff are not involved in their care. Beginning in PGY-2, residents have the opportunity to participate in a longitudinal ambulatory experience with a ‘private’ community-based internist or subspecialist. This allows the intern a chance to see management and the business of medicine in the "real world." These physicians have distinguished themselves by their abilities as a clinician-educator.

The Primary Care Internal Medicine Track is a hybrid program, combining the breadth and outpatient exposure of family practice with the depth of internal medicine in just 3 years. This track places a greater emphasis on outpatient care, including an increased number of continuity clinics, and common outpatient procedures (i.e., splinting and casting, joint injection, treadmills, flex sigs., derm, etc.) . Residents can rotate on pediatrics, gain additional exposure to adolescent patients, women’s health, sports medicine, alternative medicine and many other areas. There is enough time on the wards, ICU and medicine subspecialties to gain confidence in caring for sick and complicated patients, while leaving 17 months of subspecialties and electives to "customize" training. The program also emphasizes behavioral techniques, humanism and ethics. The primary care program doesn’t affect your chances for a fellowship; several recent graduates have gone into rheumatology, sports medicine and other fields. The Primary Care Track does have a separate NRMP program number. Should your career goals change during residency, you are able to switch tracks.

Yes. We have a separate hospitalist track within the categorical medicine program that provides the intensive training needed to be a qualified and competent hospitalist. Please see our Curriculum for more details.

There are ample opportunities to do research. The hospital has close to 700 active studies going on at any one time in just about every area of medicine. Residents are engaged in multiple research projects, in areas from therapeutic trials to diagnostic testing to computers and clinical decision-making. Our residents have consistently won research and case report awards at the American College of Physicians State Chapter meeting. IN addition we have had national ACP presenters consistently over the past few years. St.Vincent has recently been awarded a major National Cancer Institute grant, providing us access to multiple NIH-funded Oncology trials. While major funded projects (NIH, etc.) are available, the St.Vincent Foundation provides ample financial support to residents interested in undertaking their own projects. The residency program provides support with research design, project management and bio-statistical analysis. We have also created a Research Interest Group to provide didactic training in research methodology.

Caring for the poor, one of our Core Values, extends beyond the walls of our hospital. Residents can do 1 month per year in essentially any third world country, providing health care and learning about the unique socio-cultural aspects of the region. Dr Steven Gerke, Associate Program Director, precepts an international mission trip to Guatemala each year. This experience focuses on providing a lasting public health and educational impact to rural Guatemala. Recently, several residents have traveled to India, Nepal, Argentina, and, the Ukraine. Our residency program provides financial assistance with travel expenses, up to $1500.

Yes. Dr Lannie Cation, Associate Program Director, coordinates this program every other week. The emphasis is on “board-relevant” materials, and test-taking skills. We use materials from the ACP’s Medical Knowledge Self-Assessment Program (MKSAP), ACP Prep for Boards, MedStudy, and other resources. The program provides each resident a copy of the most recent MKSAP.