University of california riverside internal medicine residency

Welcome from our Program Director

I am thrilled to welcome you to the Riverside Community Hospital Internal Medicine Residency Program website!.

About our program

At a glance:

• 45 Categorical Internal Medicine Residents, 15 per year
• 10 Preliminary Residents
• Orientation Dates: Last week of June
• Start Date: July 1st
• Primary Training Sites:
  • Inpatient – Riverside Community Hospital
  • Continuity and Subspecialty Clinic: Riverside Medical Clinic and Platinum Providers Medical Group
• Highly qualified faculty from both academic and community settings, providing a unique training experience in a variety of practice settings and patient payer mix
• Rotations in Cardiology, Critical Care, Endocrinology, Gastroenterology, Geriatrics, Hematology/Oncology, Infectious Diseases, Nephrology, Neurology, Pulmonary Disease, Rheumatology, Emergency Medicine
• Night float structure eliminating the need for overnight call from day team
• All rotation sites conveniently located in Riverside
• Highly competitive resident salary, benefits and perks

Mission statement

The Riverside Internal Medicine Residency program’s mission is to develop the next generation of physicians and physician leaders. As a part of HCA Healthcare, we are driven by a single mission: “Above all else, we are committed to the care and improvement of human life”

This program is designed to offer residents a rewarding, educational environment where residents are provided individualized learning opportunities by faculty and staff who support and sustain one another throughout quality care delivery. Our faculty are committed to ensuring the residents’ clinical experience and educational needs are fulfilled while expanding residents’ perspectives to be inclusive of cultures, values, and ideals.

Program overview

The core competencies of ACGME (patient care, medical knowledge, professionalism, systems-based practice, interpersonal and communication skills, and practice-based learning and improvement) are the cornerstones of our residency program. With these competencies in mind, we have established a curriculum that draws on clinical experiences and encompasses case-based discussions, web-based learning, simulation, and lectures. We are confident that with these tools, you will become excellent internists and lifelong self-directed learners to adjust to the constantly changing skyline for health care.

Get to Know the Team

Conference schedule

Education: The learning environment will include both inpatient and various outpatient venues, thus giving you a flavor of different practice styles and a diverse patient base. The designed curriculum puts emphasis on education over service and includes:

• Hopkins Modules
• Daily morning reports
• Daily noon conferences
• Monthly tumor board/morbidity and mortality conferences
• Monthly board practice exam
• Monthly journal clubs
• Monthly on-going lecture series including specialty presentations
• Friday school, a biweekly Internal Medicine Board review session

We also encourage scholarly development through poster presentations, case reports, and case presentations at local, regional and national conferences. We have a focused subspecialty education curriculum. Resident update and feedback sessions, as well as career preparation and practice management sessions are held on a regular basis to complete your educational experience.

Curriculum & Rotation Schedule

Our expertly crafted programs are designed to provide resident physicians with all the experiences and training necessary for professional success.

See our Schedule

Salary & Benefits

Health Benefits:

• Medical
• Prescription Drugs
• Dental & Vision
• Flexible Spending Accounts
• Life Insurance
• Long-Term Disability Coverage

Finance-related Benefits:

• HCA 401(k) Plan
• Employee Stock Purchase Plan
• Financial Fitness

Life-related Benefits:

• Employee Wellbeing Program
• Time Away From Work
• CorePlus Voluntary Benefits (i.e. LifeLock Identity Theft Protection, Legal Benefits, Short-Term Disability, Voluntary Life Insurance, Auto & Home Insurance, Pet Insurance)
• Other Voluntary Benefits (i.e. AirMed Medical Transport, Adoption Assistance, Bright Horizons Family Solutions, Consumer Discounts)

Frequently asked questions

Is Riverside Community Hospital a busy one?

Despite its “community” moniker, Riverside Community Hospital is quite busy! It is a 478-bed hospital, with 69 ICU beds and has one of the busiest emergency departments in Southern California. RCH has an accredited chest pain center, STEMI center, active TAVR program, comprehensive stroke center, kidney- and pancreas-transplant programs, and comprehensive cancer center. It is also the only Level 1 Trauma Center in Riverside County.

How is your program schedule structured?

Our categorical residents are scheduled according to a 4+1 format. Primary care continuity clinic is not required for our preliminary interns (though opportunities exist).

Where do your residents rotate?

All inpatient rotations are at Riverside Community Hospital. Our continuity clinics are located within 15 miles of the hospital: Riverside Medical Clinic, Platinum Providers Medical Clinic, and Circle City Medical Group. The majority of our subspecialty clinics are located in the city of Riverside.

What do your residents do after graduation?

The post-graduate plans for our residents run the gamut! Our residents have gone on to hospitalist and primary care positions in Orange County, Los Angeles, the Inland Empire, Las Vegas, and Northern California. They have joined private practices, Kaiser Permanente, and academic groups including the internal medicine faculty here at Riverside Community Hospital! We have had fellowship matches in cardiology, gastroenterology, critical care, nephrology, hematology/oncology, rheumatology, palliative care, and infectious disease.

What changes do you anticipate in the coming year?

We are investing heavily in handheld ultrasound training. We have developed new rotations to give our residents hand-on learning, and are making use of our state-of-the-art simulation lab. Our hospitalist faculty are undergoing ultrasound training to incorporate this valuable skill into rounds and direct patient care. This is in addition to the procedure workshop series we instituted this past year, to go over skills such as central line, thoracentesis, lumbar puncture, and pap smear. This coming year we plan to add to our already-robust career-planning activities, with a Women in Medicine interest group, and a hospitalist track. We also plan to expand our existing mock-fellowship and -job interviews.

Are meals provided?

We keep a fully-stocked resident kitchen, filled with coffee, sandwiches, yogurts, parfaits, salads, candy, chips, soda, water, and more. Our residents also receive a semi-monthly stipend of $150 for use in our cafeteria, covering about two meals daily.

How do you help prepare your residents for the American Board of Internal Medicine?

This year, residents are given a subscription to AccessMedicine and ACP Medical Knowledge Self-Assessment Program (MKSAP). PGY-3 year residents were enrolled in Awesome Review, a highly-rated third-party board review course. We have also developed quarterly subject-based practice exams to help guide studying and track progress over time. 100% of our graduating residents have passed ABIM!

In what ways do you promote resident wellness?

In patient care, we work to promote strong working relationships with nursing, pharmacy, case management, environmental services, and nutrition services so that our residents can focus their energy on acute patient management. Resident input to program policies has a large impact on wellness. For that reason, we have class representatives to collect and share feedback to program leadership.

In addition, our residents serve on program-specific and GME-wide wellness and advisory committees to advocate for resident needs. The program strives to promote resident community—it supports 2-3 events annually, as well as class retreats. Our residents have recently held retreats at Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm, Newport Beach, go-kart courses, and mini-golf.

Of note during the pandemic, we ensured that all residents had access to personal protective equipment, were eligible for the first batch of vaccine received by the hospital, and we worked to limit superfluous patient exposure. We also worked with California Baptist University to provide mental health services for our residents.

What support does your program provide to pursue scholarly activity?

Our residents have access to the research division at HCA, allowing for large, retrospective database analysis. Others have taken part in quality improvement projects, research utilizing our cardiac catheterization lab outcomes data, prospective studies in medical education, and prospective pharmaceutical trials.

Our residents have presented research and quality improvement projects at national conferences including American College of Physicians (ACP), Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM), American College of Cardiology (ACC), American Heart Association (AHA), Digestive Disease Week (DDW), American College of Gastroenterology (ACG), CHEST, European Annual Congress of Rheumatology (EULAR), IDWeek, ENDO, and National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN). The majority of our interns have presented case reports at regional conferences for ACP and Society for General Internal Medicine (SGIM). Our residents receive travel and conference reimbursement on an annual basis. In addition, our residents published 23 peer-reviewed articles from 2019 to 2020.