Research opportunities

The Internal Medicine Residency offers a unique academic mentoring program starting in your PGY-1 year that creates opportunities and connections for future career success. Mentorship is tailored to your individual interests and goals, and we help you to identify a research mentor that aligns with your interests. Our successful mentorship model helps you to be successful in securing academic medicine faculty and/or fellowship positions. We also help you develop the skills needed for lifelong scholarly engagement.

Our residents are very successful in producing peer-reviewed publications and national presentations. Mayo Clinic provides residents with up to five trips (10 weekdays) per year to present their research at regional, national, or international meetings. Mayo also provides funding of $2,550 per trip to cover travel costs and registration fees.

Residents interested in a physician-scientist pathway are eligible to apply for the Clinician Investigator Training Program after completion of their PGY-1 year. The Clinician Investigator Training Program provides an integrated, comprehensive educational research experience, which includes six months of research during residency and 18 months of research during fellowship at Mayo Clinic.

Quality improvement

In addition to traditional academic scholarship, residents are active in quality improvement and safety initiatives. Each year, our residency completes five quality improvement projects (QI) under faculty mentorship. The focus of each project is chosen by our residents. Many residency quality improvement projects are carried forward to become presentations and publications. The residency also provides a tiered recognition program for residents' participation and commitment to QI throughout their training.

Here are some examples of quality improvement projects completed by our residents under faculty mentorship:

• Chasing the Gap in Direct Admissions: A Quality Improvement Project
• A Quality Improvement Approach to Decrease the Utilization of Docusate in Hospitalized Patients
• Intravenous Access in Gastrointestinal Hemorrhage: A Multidisciplinary Quality Improvement Initiative Led by Emergency Department Nurses and Internal Medicine Physicians
• Reducing unnecessary testing: an intervention to improve resident ordering practices
• Reducing empiric piperacillin-tazobactam use for patients with community-acquired intra-abdominal infections