While we believe that the most important and effective learning in internal medicine is accomplished through direct patient care, we recognize the value of a structured curriculum and the importance of teaching conferences. Our conferences range from didactic lectures to case discussions and interactive workshops. The following is a brief description of the core conferences for internal medicine housestaff; please note that this is just a small fraction of the multiple educational conferences that are offered throughout the Medical Center. Residents also attend various subspecialty core lectures during the required subspecialty blocks. Most of these are lectures specifically prepared for the residents and presented by faculty members.

Noon conferences are held Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday every week throughout the year. At Ronald Reagan-UCLA Medical Center, key inpatient internal medicine topics are presented. In addition, each senior resident presents a scholarly talk during this time slot. Special noon conferences are also presented monthly, including: Journal Club, Ethics Conference, Housestaff Policy  Committee Meetings, Morbidity and Mortality Teaching Conference, and Chief of Service Rounds, where cases are presented as unknowns to the Executive Vice Chair of the Department of Medicine.  At Santa Monica-UCLA, in addition to community-oriented faculty lectures on various general medicine topics, there are weekly joint Pulmonary-Infectious Diseases case conferences,  teaching conferences on medical documentation for junior and senior residents and a monthly Hospitalist Journal Club.

There is a 30 minute Case Conference that is held before each weekly continuity clinic. Residents and faculty discuss cases that have been prepared by faculty with key reference articles provided. Each week a different topic in ambulatory medicine is covered, and the curriculum spans two years (there are approximately 100 topics).

Exclusively for first-year residents, Intern Intake is a conference held every Wednesday.  Led by the chief residents, basic topics related to management of acute medical problems in hospitalized patients are covered. This is a great time to discuss interesting patients, share clinical dilemmas, and bond with other interns.

The Department of Medicine hosts Grand Rounds every Wednesday morning for faculty, community physicians and housestaff and attendance is required.  UCLA faculty, as well as visiting faculty, present topics ranging from state-of-the-art, ground-breaking research to practical, clinically-oriented topics.

Morning Report is led by the chief residents and held every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday mornings. During this conference, residents present interesting cases to their colleagues and faculty in an interactive forum.  Differential diagnoses and management plan are developed collaboratively and key teaching points are presented at the end of the case. The cases presented during Morning Report are drawn from residents' inpatient and outpatient medicine experiences, systems-based practice, and different disciplines.  In addition, special morning conferences that occur on a monthly basis include: Autopsy Conference, wherein autopsies of patients cared for on medicine services are reviewed with a pathologist and GI Radiology Rounds, where radiology films are reviewed in a small group forum with a radiology attending.

All R2’s and R3’s on ambulatory blocks attend Didactics conference after Grand Rounds every Wednesday morning.  This mandatory general internal medicine conference series covers core topics in ambulatory general internal medicine and emphasizes topics that lend themselves to a more interactive teaching format (e.g., workshops on end-of-life discussions and breaking bad news, joint exams and trigger point injections, general ophthalmology and funduscopic exam, cardiac auscultation, etc.).  Didactics are followed by an Outpatient Practice Management series where issues pertinent to outpatient practice are discussed, including the basics of building and maintaining a practice, phone medicine, arranging home care services, coumadin clinic, mental health resources, health insurance structure, and quality improvement.

Junior Resident Rounds and Senior Resident Rounds are conferences for second- and third-year residents, respectively. These are hosted monthly by the chief residents and are a forum for residents to present as unknowns cases to their peers, the chief residents and a faculty facilitator in an informal setting.  Resident presenters review pertinent literature related to the case and share key learning points.

General Internal Medicine faculty host a monthly Primary Care journal club where primary care residents and faculty review recent studies pertinent to primary care physicians. Conferences are held in the evening and dinner is provided.