Electives

Residents have a total of 18 weeks of elective time devoted to specific areas of interest as part of the Career Development Track and open electives. Emergency medicine has faculty with vast interests and areas of expertise that can help to craft additional, creative training opportunities for residents.

Career Development Track electives

During the Career Development Track curriculum, residents receive enhanced one-on-one mentorship from expert faculty, drawing from Mayo Clinic Arizona’s broad institutional strengths and specialized expertise. Residents are provided with 12 weeks of longitudinal, dedicated time across their residency (four weeks of CDT elective time during PGY-2, PGY-3 and PGY-4) to engage in focused experiences, projects, and electives that advance their career goals.

Additionally, residents have opportunities to pursue research, quality improvement initiatives, educational projects, and leadership development within their niche. These experiences are designed not only to provide advanced learning but also to strengthen each resident's professional portfolio for fellowship training, academic appointments, or leadership roles following graduation. This longitudinal, mentored approach ensures that every resident is empowered to leave residency with a strong professional identity, well-rounded clinical skills, and a solid foundation for future success.

The clinical and/or non-clinical educational experience of the CDT elective rotations will be variable depending on the CDT selection and goals and objectives written by each resident and their CDT director(s) and mentor(s).

CDT options include:

• Administration
• Critical care medicine
• Emergency medical services (EMS)
• Global health
• Integrative medicine
• Medical education
• Palliative care medicine
• Sports medicine
• Toxicology/Addiction medicine
• Ultrasound

The program encourages creativity and collaboration and is fully committed to supporting resident-driven initiatives and alternative track development. If a resident holds an interest in a CDT that is not listed above or has not yet been established, that resident and their chosen mentor may develop and submit a curriculum with illustrated rotation goals and objectives for approval through the program director and Mayo GME.

Each resident is expected to complete and disseminate a scholarly project (e.g., educational or research publication, presentation or workshop development at a national or international conference, book chapter writing, published quality improvement project, etc.) as a part of the CDT curriculum. Residents are given protected time (around 25% of CDT elective time) to dedicate to completion of a scholarly project. They are also given an additional week of protected time during the PGY-4 admin/QI rotation for completion of a mentored quality improvement project.

PGY-3 and PGY-4 electives

Senior electives are individualized rotations, in which educational goals and objectives vary and are created in a focused, self-driven manner by residents and faculty mentor(s). The clinical and/or non-clinical educational experience of this elective rotation is variable depending on the individualized rotation selection and goals and objectives written by each resident and their elective rotation director(s). Examples of potential elective opportunities include:

• Sports medicine
• Advanced ultrasound
• Research
• Administration/Operations/QI
• Hospital internal medicine
• Health professions education
• Social medicine
• Palliative care
• Global health
• EMS
• Wilderness medicine
• Integrative medicine
• Health policy and advocacy
• Addiction medicine
• Simulation
• Community emergency medicine

Should a resident have an elective rotation interest that is not listed above, they are encouraged to work in conjunction with the program director/associate program director(s) and a faculty mentor to create a new elective opportunity.

Emergency medicine/trauma PGY-3 and PGY-4 selectives

Senior residents will have the opportunity to select amongst community, academic, or rural settings to gain exposure to emergency medicine or trauma care within differing clinical settings. See below for descriptions of established emergency medicine selective sites. We plan to continue to expand on the options for senior selectives in the future with input on inaugural resident preferences.

Emergency medicine at Mayo Clinic in Minnesota

Residents fulfill the responsibilities of a senior resident working in the emergency department at Mayo Clinic Hospital in Rochester. This is a large academic tertiary care center and a Level 1 trauma center. It is the primary hospital serving the city of Rochester and also receives many transfers of complex and critically ill patients in a multi-state region. This rotation is an excellent opportunity to gain experience working in an alternate and unique academic emergency department, while being exposed to medically complex and critically ill patients, including level one trauma patients and critically ill pediatric patients.

Emergency medicine at Mayo Clinic in Florida

Residents fulfill the responsibilities of a senior resident working in the emergency department at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville. This is a large academic tertiary care center and a Comprehensive Stroke Center. This rotation is an excellent opportunity to gain experience working in an alternate and unique emergency department, while being exposed to medically complex and critically ill patients.

St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center emergency medicine

St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center is one of the busiest community adult emergency departments in the state of Arizona and is a Level 1 trauma center. It is also the emergency department for Barrow Neurological Center, a world-renowned center for neurosciences and research. This rotation is an excellent opportunity to gain experience working in an alternate and unique emergency department, while being exposed to a high volume of critically ill patients, patients with neurologic emergencies, and patients of an underserved population. This rotation will also provide perspective on an alternate model of emergency department physician staffing by a private democratic physician-owned group. During this rotation, residents will be expected to lead the resuscitation of critically ill patients, while simultaneously managing the acute care of multiple patients, and assist attending physicians in overall departmental flow.

Winslow Indian Health Care Center/Dilkon Medical Center emergency medicine

Winslow Indian Health Care Center serves an estimated 190,000 Native Americans, most of whom are Navajo, and serves eight chapter areas in the southwest region of the Navajo Nation. The WIHCC also provides services to the people living in the border towns of Winslow.

Dilkon Medical Center has a rural emergency department that sees approximately 10,000-12,000 patients annually with limited diagnostic and consultant resources.

WIHCC urgent care is set up as an emergency department, and has capabilities to perform emergent interventions, including invasive airway interventions and giving thrombolytics for ischemic stroke. WIHCC’s urgent care also has its own ambulance system. The unit is not considered an emergency department because it is not open 24 hours, but otherwise functions as a low-resource, freestanding emergency department.

Residents complete shifts at both the DMC emergency department and the WIHCC urgent care, providing emergency care services to a diverse patient population in the greater Arizona community. Trainees gain valuable learning experience in the practice of medicine in a resource-limited setting.