Residency Rap
 

Residency Academics

by Jarrod Shapiro, DPM
PRESENT Resident Editor
Botsford General Hospital
Farmington Hills, MI

This is an exciting and full academic week for us here in Michigan. The end of this week will see the Michigan Podiatric Medical Association’s yearly meeting, a strong didactic program with interesting lectures and workshops to further increase our skills.

This upcoming meeting has me thinking about didactics at our residency programs. I imagine it’s pretty common for each residency program to have its own academic curriculum independent from all others with the occasional interaction with other nearby programs for pathology conferences and such. However, wouldn’t it be educational if somehow there was some interaction between programs on this topic, a give and take? Would this not provide residency programs around the country new and fresh ideas they could use to further enhance their respective programs? If only we had such a resource….

What do you know? We do -- the Residency Rap!

I’d love to hear what interesting didactics residents around the country are involved in. Write in with your weekly/monthly schedule of academic activities. Here’s your chance to brag about one of the strengths of your programs!

I’ll start us off with an explanation of the didactic program at Botsford General Hospital. On Tuesday mornings we have a Jeopardy-style board review. One resident per week is assigned to create questions (usually four categories each with five questions) from a previously assigned McGlamry chapter. We divide into two teams and compete for the most correct answers while our director moderates. Wednesday morning is resident lecture. Thursday mornings alternate between journal club, where we dissect recent podiatric articles with an evidence based perspective, and senior resident grand rounds. One of the seniors comes up with a case study, and the rest of the gang works it up, just like interviews. We then discuss all diagnostic and treatment options from all angles. Every other Friday is a radiology review with our director. We discuss surgical cases from the preceding two weeks while reviewing the radiographs. This is a great opportunity to discuss intraoperative complications and useful tips and pearls to improve outcomes. We additionally have a quarterly clinical pathology conference, a biweekly evidence based medicine lecture by one of our attendings, a discussion with our director based around the PRESENT lecture schedule, and several other attending lectures throughout the year. This is a busy didactic program, but it serves us well clinically as well as during the Board exams.

Write in and illuminate us with the academics at your programs. I’ll bet the didactics around the country are as varied as the programs themselves! I look forward to your responses.