Internal Medicine Residency Program Strengths

At Guthrie, you will train with some of the finest physicians in their fields. Residents will experience one-on-one attention from sub-specialist attendings who are an integral part of the teaching culture. There is also Fellowship involvement in subspecialty rotations and research. Our three fellowships are Cardiology, Pulmonary/Critical Care and Gastroenterology. Residents see patients in a variety of clinical settings - outpatient, inpatient, long term care, physical therapy, and wound care. We also have a psychiatric pharmacist embedded in our clinic to assist with treatment of psychiatric diagnoses.

Every week on Friday an hour is dedicated to personal wellness. Residents can use this time to take care of personal business that needs to be conducted during regular business hours, or even to just take some time for themselves. During the warmer times of year many residents use this time to stroll through the farmers market across from the hospital and even get lunch there as well. Guthrie also provides unique learning opportunities on time-management, employee-assistance program for wellness, training on resilience, personal and relational growth, professional advancement advice etc. Monthly and quarterly Resident and Faculty-driven activities occur such as: Intern welcome party, Faculty-residents dinner, resident planned picnics, and other residents-get-togethers.

Guthrie has achieved Epic Gold Stars Level 10, in recognition of the healthcare system’s use of the many functions the electronic medical records (EMR) system software offers. The recognition is the highest level that can be achieved and places Guthrie among a group of approximately 1 percent of Epic organizations that have received this distinction.

Residents have the opportunity to have GCSOM (Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine) faculty appointments and actually teach/mentor medical students regularly. Our students are very grateful for the support they enjoy from our residents and fellows!

When it comes to research, we have the support of the Guthrie Foundation and Vicky Hickey (Coordinator of Research and Education). They provide resources for Journal Club, IRB navigation, and statistical support. Additional resources are yearly research fellows, and Guthrie Scholars are also available to support our program in research.

Guthrie Robert Packer Hospital has been a member of AIAMC for many years. While there are many benefits to membership, the greatest value to our program has been the opportunity to learn from national experts and to participate in National Initiatives on health disparities, wellness, teaming, and now justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion. In the 2020-2021 academic year, we linked resident-led quality improvement projects on diabetes care, colon cancer screening, and transitions of care to the just-concluded National Initiative on Teaming, and presented all three reports at the AIAMC virtual meeting in March. For 2021-2023, we are examining social determinants of health among our patient populations. This kind of involvement makes for a more well-rounded program and residents.

Unique to our program is the SBP rotation that our PGY2 residents participate in. During the SBP rotation, a block time of one month is provided in two segments.

• In the first segment: experiential learning by interacting with a wide range of system components is arranged. Residents meet in-person with 12 departments such as reimbursement, billing, coding, documentation, transition of care, compliance, clinical outcomes, infection control. They also meet with senior leaders to learn about population health, patient-centered medical home (PCMH), social determinants of health (SDOH), practice administration to understand the business side of medicine; Designated Institutional Official (DIO) to learn how system-quality goal are developed; Graduate Medical Education (GME) Director to learn skills such as conflict resolution and effective leadership. Other important topics covered by the Faculty mentors are cultural competency, high value care, understanding the basics of payment models and US healthcare finance.
• In the second segment, the Residents are guided by a Faculty mentor to develop and execute Quality Improvement projects which have system-relevance, and participate in intra and inter-residency competitions.