Residency Program

Structure

The Internal Medicine Residency program involves extensive training in both inpatient and outpatient settings. This training is divided between UAMS Hospital and the Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System (CAVHS). Table 1 below describes the ward teams at UAMS. Each ward team is staffed by a faculty physician. The subspecialty teams may involve a fellow in addition to the Internal Medicine resident and interns. The MICU and CCU are closed units and equally staffed.

Table 2 below describes the ward teams at the CAVHS. There are 4 General Medicine teams and 1 Cardiology team. The MICU and CCU are again closed units at the CAVA.

Call System

Our night float call system was implemented in 1991 and was one of the first night float systems in the country. It dramatically reduced the amount of overnight call our house officers spend in the hospital. This program has continued to be very popular with residents and faculty. This system has allowed our housestaff members to maintain well balanced lives while still receiving an excellent education.

At UAMS, the ward float team consists of one upper level resident and two interns who handle all overnight responsibilities from 8pm to 8am Monday through Friday. They have weekends off. The ward team residents and interns therefore take rotating short call during the week till 8 pm and rotating overnight call on the weekends only.

In the units at both UAMS and the VA as well as on the wards at the VA, there is a similar night float system in place for the upper level residents only. Interns in the MICU, CCU or VA Wards therefore do traditional overnight call. This call usually is q4-5 in the units and q6 on VA Wards.

Money for food is provided for all residents and interns when they are on call or on a night float rotation.