Georgetown University Hospital/Washington Hospital Center Internal Medicine

Program Director: Sailaja Pindiprolu, MD

The Georgetown University Hospital/Washington Hospital Center Internal Medicine Residency Program is a comprehensive training experience that prepares residents for the complex and challenging role internists have in the delivery of quality health care.

The program provides the education, clinical experience and faculty mentorship necessary to train compassionate and skilled physicians. While the curriculum is firmly grounded in general medicine topics, opportunities for research and subspecialty experience make it an excellent training program for a variety of career paths, including careers in academic medicine, primary care and subspecialty practice.

Although this program is administered separately from the internal medicine residency program at Georgetown University , residents schedule rotations at both institutions as well as the Washington DC Veterans Affairs Medical Center. As such, residents reap the benefits of training at the region's largest and most comprehensive teaching hospital, a renowned university hospital and a strong VA medical center.

In June 2006, the residency program (along with all of its sponsored subspecialty fellowship programs) again received a full five-year accreditation from the ACGME/Residency Review Committee for Internal Medicine.

Five key principles drive the program’s success in training top-notch physicians:

• Training is optimized when expert full-time faculty work closely with residents to care for a wide variety of patients. The Hospital Center ’s Department of Medicine employs more than 80 full-time physicians to teach in the internal medicine residency and fellowship training programs. Members of the faculty are skilled and experienced clinicians who have chosen to teach residents and fellows as a large part of their daily activities. The benefits of a dedicated teaching faculty are enhanced by the diversity of the patient population. As the largest hospital in the nation’s capital, residents routinely care for patients with a vast array of common and rare medical conditions.
• Training includes a variety of outpatient and inpatient venues. Resident rotations include orthopedics, gynecology, psychiatry, ophthalmology, ENT and adolescent and geriatric medicine.
• Mentor residents as individuals and colleagues. Residents are assigned formal faculty advisors with whom they meet regularly. In addition, through the mentorship program, they are encouraged to self-select a faculty mentor. The formal advisory program and the informal mentoring program together create a strong support system that ensures adequate individual attention and guidance for each resident.
• Training humane physicians requires a humane training environment. The residency years can be exciting and gratifying, but also extremely stressful. The program’s faculty, nursing and ancillary staff, fellows, and senior residents are as committed to creating a humane and supportive environment as they are to providing quality, professional education. Self-selected mentors, formal and informal gatherings, fully-staffed non-teaching service, excellent ancillary support and an accessible faculty have significant positive impact on the residency experience.
• Residents should be actively involved in shaping their training program. The program is continually evolving to meet the needs of its residents. Resident feedback and suggestions are encouraged and often implemented. Resident involvement takes many forms, from formal meetings to surveys. Residents chair and comprise the majority of membership on the Medical Education Committee. The committee meets every month to evaluate their training and to draft appropriate recommendations. The Department of Medicine also plans periodic events, including a breakfast meeting in the fall and an overnight retreat in the spring. Both events are opportunities for residents and faculty to discuss ways in which to enhance the training experience.

Success in a residency program requires exposure to a broad and diverse patient population, guidance from a knowledgeable and accessible faculty, didactic instruction within a well-constructed curriculum and support from dedicated and enthusiastic peers. This program meets the challenges of residency education in internal medicine because it is uniquely strong in all of these areas.

Leonard Wartofsky, MD, Chair

Sal Pindiprolu, MD, Program Director

Sanjay Desai, MD, Associate Program Director

Leon Lai, MD, Associate Program Director

Deborah Topol, MD, Associate Program Director