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 Internal Medicine Residency FAQs


Application questions

What are your application requirements?

Our home page details application requirements.

Location and faculty questions

What makes Marshfield special?

Marshfield has advantages of big-city medicine with a small-town lifestyle. Cultural opportunities abound in not-so-far away Minneapolis, Madison, Milwaukee and Chicago

We practice cutting-edge medicine in state-of-the-art facilities (including our extensively funded Research Institute) and have outstanding faculty and staff.

At Marshfield Clinic, great medical care is definitely a team effort. You will be treated as an integral part of the team and enjoy close working relationships with faculty. Many residents even participate in leisure activities with faculty and staff members. Attendings are very approachable and are available for teaching and consultation.

With the entire medical center under one roof, it's easy to shift from hospital to clinic or  library, catch a hallway consultation, or schedule one of your continuity patients for a same-day sick visit.

How would you describe your residents?

We have a rather diverse group of residents and view this as a great strength of our program.

M.D./Ph.D.s elevate the academic mien while individuals who have raised families, farmed, or worked in the private sector add depth and maturity.

Simply put, you will not find a more collegial, affable group of eager, motivated learners. Many long-term friendships are forged during months spent on wards or in the ICU.

How would you describe your faculty?

We have an all-voluntary teaching staff. These clinicians come to us from across the country and around the world. Many have research interests or areas of special expertise and all are well-recognized clinicians.

Most of our faculty hold clinical appointments at UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, and a majority of them have been recognized as Clinical Teacher of the Year by graduating UW fourth-year medical students.

Residency and training questions

Will I see a broad enough spectrum of disease states and pathology?

Our facility is unique in that we are the premier referral/tertiary care center for northern Wisconsin and the upper peninsula of Michigan. This allows our residents to care for both common and rare diseases.

Our ambulatory experience offers the opportunity to provide longitudinal ambulatory care to a population that mirrors a real world practice as well as seeing esoteric subspecialty referrals.

Will I have enough autonomy?​

You will be the first point of contact for all the patients on your team and provide the entirety of their care with progressive responsibility.

What about private patients and their multiple attendings?

We structure all our ward and ICU rotations around an academic model, where a close-knit cadre of health care providers care for all patients. Only the primary service residents write orders, save for subspecialty orders directly related to special procedures/treatments, for their patients.

Will I be able to do enough procedures?

Following a simulation lab experience in orientation, residents perform multiple diagnostic and therapeutic procedures with the aid of bedside ultrasound (routinely used in ICU and Wards for diagnostic purposes).

Additionally, residents are trained to become competent in multiple procedures that include – but are not limited to – the following:

  • Arterial line insertion
  • Central venous line placement
  • Endotracheal intubation
  • Exercise treadmill testing
  • Joint aspiration and injection
  • Lumbar puncture
  • Mechanical ventilator management
  • Paracentesis
  • Thoracentesis

How academic/scholarly is your program?

We take our responsibility of nurturing scholarship quite seriously. We approach this challenge via two main venues: structured learning opportunities, and scholarly activity requirements.

In brief, we teach you via a classical model of core curricular lectures, morning case conference, journal club, board review, EKG series, Radiology conference, etc. We also nurture your own ability to teach yourself and others via engendering intellectual curiosity and building scholarly attributes through our “Scholarly Activity Requirement.”

We believe this combination of didactic presentation and nurturing lifelong learning skills, will prepare you for both the ABIM Certifying Examination as well as a lifetime of medical practice.

Our residents have been engaged in numerous scholarly activity projects including posters, published articles, case reports, original research and multiple conference presentations that have been delivered at both state and national venues.

What about your outpatient experience?

We prepare you for ambulatory practice in a variety of ways. You will provide ambulatory care via a number of electives in outpatient settings (Rheumatology, Endocrinology, Gastroenterology, etc.) as well as your own outpatient practice. The electives help nurture your ability to provide consultative care in the ambulatory setting, while your ambulatory block clinic provides the longitudinal care for a panel of patients.

We also embrace the Patient Centered Medical Home model. It is incorporated into your ambulatory training, truly the cutting edge of medicine.

We have implemented the ambulatory mini-block schedule. With this schedule, residents rotate in an outpatient clinic for a 2-week block every 8 weeks. Residents are exposed to a half-day subspecialty or study/QI-related time during this block.

Find more information on our Rotation Schedule page.  

Additionally, we use the Hopkins Modules, a series of thorough, evidence-based computer-based education modules dealing with a wide range of outpatient issues.

Residents also utilize the weekly outpatient Yale Learning Modules for didactic learning in conjunction with small group case-based learning.

What about hospitalist experience?

We staff 70 percent of ward teams with hospitalists as attendings. In addition, each PGY3 has a one month focused experience on our hospitalist consult service where you provide consultative care.

 

Rotation questions

Do you offer rural medicine rotations?

You will have an opportunity to spend 1-2 months during your second or third year in our Marshfield Clinic rural centers of Pa​rk Falls and/or Minocqu​​a in an inpatient or outpatient setting.

Are there opportunities for away rotations?

Yes, you will have the opportunity to pursue away rotations. Over the years, our residents have experienced rotations in many locations around the United States, including places like Massachusetts General Hospital, UPenn, and many others.

Do you offer international rotations?

Yes, up to 2 weeks during your second or third years in El Salvador, Belize, Honduras or other locations with a faculty member.​

Life after resid​​ency questions

What do your graduates do after graduation?

Our residents pursue an equally broad range of professional pursuits after graduation.

Overall, our three-year aggregate graduate data shows one third going into fellowship programs, one third going into primary care and one third becoming hospitalists.

A significant number of graduates remain at Marshfield Medical Center, and many are involved in academic and medical administration.

You can see recent class pursuits on our Alumni Page

What are your board pass rates?

Per the ABIM website, Marshfield Clinic Internal Medicine Residency Program has a five-year pass rate of 93 percent.

Will I be able to get a fellowship?

Regarding fellowship placement, the following roster indicates where our graduates have pursued fellowship training:

  • Allergy / Immunology - Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI
  • Cardiology - Baylor University, Houston TX; Ochsner Clinic, New Orleans LA; Health Science Center at Brooklyn, Brooklyn, NY; Mt Sinai Hospital, Milwaukee, WI, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI; Mayo Clinic, Phoenix, AZ; Cardiovascular Disease Fellowship at Marshfield Clinic Health System - Marshfield, WI​; cardiovascular disease fellowship at UHS Wilson Medical Center in Johnson City, New York​

  • Pulmonary Medicine/Critical Care - Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN; University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI; Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI; Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH; University of California - Davis, Sacramento, CA; Mercy Medical Center/St Louis University, St Louis, MO; Henry Ford Hospital System, Detroit, MI; Wayne State University/Detroit Medical Center - Detroit, MI​; Icahn School of Medicine - Mount Sinai, NY ​​​
  • Gastroenterology - McMaster University, Hamilton, ON; Emory University, Atlanta, GA; Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI; Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA
  • Nephrology - Medical College of Georgia, Augusta, GA; University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI; UCLA, Los Angeles, CA
  • Rheumatology - Washington University, St. Louis, MO; University of Wisconsin – Madison, Madison WI; Vanderbilt University, Memphis TN
  • Infectious Disease - Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH; Rush/St. Luke’s Presbyterian, Chicago, IL; University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT; West Virginia University/Health Sciences Center, Morgantown, VA; Wayne State University, Detroit, MI; University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN
  • Hematology/Oncology - University of Wisconsin – Madison, Madison, WI; University of Minnesota, Minneapolis/St. Paul MN; University of Calgary, Calgary, AB;  Chan School of Medicine, Baystate Medical Center - Springfield, MA 
  • Geriatric Medicine - University of Wisconsin – Madison, Madison, WI; Montefiore Medical Center in Bronx, New York​

  • Endocrinology - Springfield, IL; Milwaukee, WI; Stanford University Medical Center - Stanford, CA; University of Cincinnati Dept of IM - Cincinnati, OH​
  • Palliative Care - Marshfield, WI​​
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