Conferences

A strength of the Massachusetts General Hospital Internal Medicine Residency Program is its comprehensive and diverse array of weekly lectures designed to complement and consolidate the education derived from patient care. Currently, teleconferencing is available for all core conferences and recordings are available for future review.

Core Curriculum Series

The Core Curriculum Series is scheduled for the first three months of the academic year and is held five days a week from 12:15-1:00 pm. Faculty members of Mass General and affiliated institutions provide an intensive review of essential internal medicine topics during this time. Lunches are provided daily for residents during these sessions.

Noon Conference Series

Following the Core Curriculum Series, the Noon Conference Series continues with faculty from Mass General and affiliated institutions as well as visiting professors leading interactive conferences on an extensive selection of clinical topics as well as conferences focused on quality and safety, medical education, physician well-being, career planning, primary research, journal club, and fellow-led subspecialty literature updates. Throughout the year, there are also frequent conferences led by residents, including the Pathways Conference, Resident as Teacher (RAT) Conferences, and Senior Resident conferences. Conferences are from 12:15-1:00 pm Monday through Friday. Lunches are provided daily for residents during these sessions.

Case Conferences

Case Conferences are held on most Fridays from 12:15-1:00 pm and come in a variety of formats:

• The New England Journal of Medicine Clinicopathological Cases (CPC) series is a favorite of trainees. Residents involved in patient care present cases to expert discussants who are unaware of the patient’s diagnosis. That expert then teaches their clinical reasoning by taking the audience through their approach to the case to determine a diagnosis. These conferences are then eventually published in the New England Journal of Medicine as part of the “Case Records from the Massachusetts General Hospital” series
• Clinical Case Reviews, akin to Morbidity and Mortality Conferences, present cases with adverse outcomes or "near misses". This provides a forum to learn from errors in diagnosis and management in a constructive and safe environment. They are typically led by residents with interests in quality and safety
• Inpatient Intake is hosted by the chief residents for the senior residents and brings together a variety of expert discussants from subspecialties across the hospital to discuss challenging clinical cases, focusing on clinical reasoning and the intricacies of clinical decision making
• Pathways Consult Service: Noon Conferences are the culmination of a two-week Pathways rotation in which teams of 2-3 residents investigate the pathophysiology of a single patient with extreme or unexplained symptoms. In these conference presentations, Pathways teams guide the audience through the questions and hypotheses they generated regarding the underlying pathobiology of their patient’s disease process. Going a step further, the teams also present potential experiments and ways they may interrogate patient-derived samples to discover novel mechanisms of disease

Intern Report

Held in July and August, Intern Report is a lecture series specifically tailored to early-year interns that reviews the diagnosis and management of diagnoses commonly encountered on the general medical service, including COPD and CHF exacerbations, GI bleeding, hypotension, diabetic ketoacidosis and acid-base disorders. These lectures are delivered by core faculty members as well as the current chief residents and are taught in an easily digestible “chalk talk” format. These conferences are recorded and available for asynchronous review on a virtual platform.

Resident Report

Resident Report is a year-long didactic series during which residents explore diagnostic frameworks or the initial workup and management of a recent case on the Bigelow through an interactive conference moderated by an expert discussant. Teleconferencing is available for those who are unable to join in person. All Resident Reports are recorded for asynchronous review.