The mission of the Primary Care Track (PCT) of the Dartmouth Internal Medicine Residency Program is to train outstanding general internists with a balanced expertise in the management of complicated inpatient and outpatient medical patients.
The PCT offers four PGY-1 positions each year under a unique match number.
Objectives
- Balance and integrate outpatient and inpatient training (including full intensive care unit experiences).
- Emphasize longitudinal and community-based ambulatory care learning with special opportunities in underserved settings throughout the region.
- Expand electives in critical non-medical specialties (e.g. Orthopedics, ENT, Ophthalmology, Women's Health, Occupational Medicine).
- Focus on skills and resources needed to efficiently and effectively use medical evidence in clinical problem solving.
- Increase ambulatory elective experiences in traditional medical specialties.
Residents in the Primary Care Track are closely integrated with the Categorical Track and share many of the same educational objectives and opportunities. PCT residents participate in the overall Residency's comprehensive curriculum including all conferences and retreats, and work alongside categorical residents in all their inpatient rotations. In addition, PCT residents have a set of specialized didactic conferences on Friday mornings during two ambulatory (Y) blocks each year on clinical medicine and rural population health topics pertinent to the development of their skills in caring for citizens of northern New England. Similarly, PCT residents will participate in a longitudinal educational outreach project at the Bugbee Senior Center in White River Junction, Vermont providing twice yearly workshops for senior citizens on health and wellness topics.
- Introduction to the Primary Care Track (0:10)
- The primary care and categorical tracks share resources and faculty, and there are many opportunities for residents in both tracks to interact in didactic and clinical activities. (0:42)
- Unique features of the primary care track include a special rural didactics curriculum, community-based practice site assignments for continuity clinics, ‘community health blocks’ (4-week-long ambulatory medicine rotations that occur twice yearly all three years), a rural population-focused culminating experience in PGY-3 year and a longitudinal community service health education project with senior citizens in the region. (1:07)
- The PCT didactics curriculum includes clinical and non-clinical topics germane to a rural population delivered in small group format by experts from northern New England and beyond. (2:56)
- Community Health Block experiences are myriad and allow residents to experience ambulatory practice models outside of their residency continuity clinic, including opportunities to serve very different demographics from very young adults to geriatric communities, migrant workers, incarcerated individuals and urban and rural populations. (3:30)
- The Rural Health Equity Intensive is a month-long PGY-3 culminating experience where residents work in a different medical setting each day of the week caring for patients suffering from afflictions seen frequently in the rural poor and underserved. (5:05)