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 up to five trips (10 weekdays) a year per resident for trip time, in addition to regular vacation time, for you to present your research at national and regional meetings. Mayo also provides $2,550 per trip to cover travel costs and registration fees

Additionally, residents who have completed their PGY-1 year are eligible to apply for the Clinician Investigator Training Program. The Clinician Investigator Training Program provides an integrated, comprehensive educational research experience, which includes six months of research during residency and a fellowship position at Mayo Clinic.

Simulation Center

One day per week during ambulatory weeks is protected for simulation center training at the J. Wayne and Delores Barr Weaver Simulation Center. This curriculum is led by our chief residents and faculty and is quite varied, from simulated patient interactions to code blue training, initial patient care procedure learning, and point of care ultrasound (POCUS). Our simulation center and POCUS curriculum are robust, and there are opportunities to spend more time in the simulation center as requested.

Innovation curriculum

Our innovation curriculum is truly unique. We have a dedicated associate program director for innovation who has implemented an innovation curriculum for our residency. This begins with monthly didactics, incorporated into our noon conference curriculum schedule, where residents learn from inspiring physician-innovators, and also learn the basic components of innovation in medicine, such as artificial intelligence. Interested residents can take this further, with individual mentorship from our identified innovation faculty, as well as presenting their ideas for engineering support and funding at various think tanks. This curriculum is truly one of a kind and is leading the way in the intersection of innovation and medical education. 

Additionally, Mayo Clinic in Florida is home to the Innovation and Discovery building. We partner with our Innovation Exchange colleagues as well as our Chief Innovation Officer on the Mayo Clinic's campus in Florida.

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 (QI) projects under faculty mentorship. The focus for the topics is chosen by our residents.

All residents become bronze-certified with formal teaching of quality metrics and have the opportunity to become silver- and gold-certified.