A Primary Care Chief Resident is chosen yearly from among the program graduates. Virginia Commonwealth University is a recipient of the highly competitive Generalist Initiative award from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. This project is designed to promote Primary Care, and involves medical students, house officers, and faculty physicians. Residents completing this program are highly qualified to pursue subsequent subspecialty training, academic medicine, or primary care careers. The combined program is comprised of 48 months equally divided between medicine and pediatrics.
Residents rotate between departments every four months.
This length of time allows house officers to fully immerse themselves within each department yet provides for exposure to seasonal variations in disease frequency. Housestaff alternate between medicine and pediatrics continuity clinics on a single half-day per week basis for the first sixteen months. Thereafter, the resident has both a weekly medicine and pediatric clinic. This program was designed to address the complex issues across a woman's lifespan with attention to physiologic, hormonal, and psychosocial factors. Our residents acquire a solid foundation in Internal Medicine through inpatient care, extensive critical care training, emergency medicine as well as ambulatory care.