Clinical Rotations

Categorical

The four-year integrated program at Northwestern University offers a broad-based year for a select group of medical school graduates. Residency in this first year complements the additional three years in physical medicine and rehabilitation. PGY-1 includes four months of internal medicine, three months of neurology, one month of emergency medicine, one month of intensive care and three months of medicine electives.

Clinical Rotations

For the PGY-2 through PGY-4 years, clinical rotations offer a wide diversity of inpatient, outpatient, consults, electrodiagnostics, procedures and electives. All residents will also participate in outpatient continuity clinics for two-and-a-half years of their residency so they can follow patients longitudinally over time. The PGY-2 year is entirely based at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab and is dedicated to inpatient rehabilitation. The PGY-3 and PGY-4 years will include a mix of outpatient, inpatient, consults, procedures, electrodiagnostics and electives at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, Northwestern Memorial Hospital, the Jesse Brown VA Hospital and Illinois Masonic Hospital.

Yearly Schedule

PGY-2

Months	Rotation
2	General Rehabilitation/Medically Complex
2	Spinal Cord Injury
2	Traumatic Brain Injury
2	Stroke
1	Cancer Rehabilitation
1	Amputee Rehabilitation
2	Floor Assist/Clinical Coverage

PGY-3

Months	Rotation
2	Electrodiagnostics
1	Sports Medicine
2	Pediatric Rehabilitation
3	Consults
1	Prosthetics & Orthotics
1	Pain Management
1	VA Inpatient
1	Elective

PGY-4

Months	Rotation
3	Electrodiagnostics
1	Sports Medicine
1	Pain Management
1	Community Hospital
1	VA Outpatient
2	Selective
3	Elective

Call & Weekend Short Call Schedule

Our residents will take in-house, overnight call at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab. There is a nocturnist that comes in overnight from 8PM to 6AM Monday through Thursday and from 10PM to 6AM Friday through Sunday. The Resident on Call (ROC) will hand the pager over to the nocturnist during this time but remain in the hospital for any pages from the pediatric floor, emergency rapid response or codes or as additional support to the nocturnist if needed. PM&R Attending physicians are available by phone at night, and a Medicine Hospitalist is available by phone at night.

Call frequency by class, on average, is:

PGY-2: 15 calls per year
PGY-3: 12-13 calls per year
PGY-4: 5 calls per year

Residents are each assigned to two to four weekend short calls over the entire year. During weekend short call, there will be two residents who will come in with six attending physicians. The residents will help admit patients into the hospital on both Saturday and Sunday. The attending physicians will round alone in the hospital and the residents will not be responsible for rounding on the inpatient services.

A home call system exists at the VA. There will be a total of two to three weeks of home call in the PGY-3 year and two to three weeks of home call in the PGY-4 year. Residents will only need to go into the VA during home call in the rare circumstances of a death or a patient who wants to leave AMA. The resident can manage and coordinate all other emergencies with the medicine teams at the VA. Residents will not be on call at the VA and at AbilityLab at the same time.

During the four weeks of VA home call, the residents will also come in on the weekend to round on the VA inpatient service. Over the course of a three-year residency, they will be asked to do weekend rounds at the VA a total of four to six times. Clinical hours during home call will be counted toward a resident's duty hours and should not exceed 80 hours a week.