The Internal Medicine Residency at Mayo Clinic is among the best programs in the world for post-graduate medical training. Join us for an inside look at a typical day on the wards and life in Rochester, Minnesota.

Clinical training and practice exams

Residency education at Mayo is based on a foundation of general internal medicine. The program includes rotations in all internal medicine subspecialties, intensive care, neurology, and emergency medicine. Some rotations allocate separate blocks of time in the inpatient, outpatient, and consultative settings. Scheduling is flexible, and preferred rotations can be scheduled to facilitate planning a subspecialty career.

Excellence in medical education is a requirement of our faculty members, who are selected for hospital service and outpatient education clinics based on the effectiveness of their teaching. Faculty members have dedicated, protected time to provide teaching to the residents with whom they work.

You’ll also receive comprehensive board review materials including access to an extensive collection of electronic resources. Scheduling is flexible, and preferred rotations can be scheduled to facilitate planning a subspecialty career.

Rochester campus

Downtown campus

At the heart of downtown stands the focal point of Mayo Clinic. The historical mixes with the modern in the 30+ downtown buildings dedicated to specialty care, primary care, clinical laboratories, research, medical education, and administration.

Mayo Clinic Hospital, Saint Marys campus

The Saint Marys Hospital campus is located 10 blocks west of downtown. It houses numerous surgical specialties, a Level 1 Trauma Center, Mayo Eugenio Litta Children’s Hospital, and Mayo Clinic Psychiatric Hospital. The campus has 1,287 beds, 55 operating rooms, and 10 intensive care units.

Flexible schedule

Scheduling is flexible, and preferred rotations can be scheduled to facilitate planning a subspecialty career. You may choose to focus your schedule on areas including, but not limited to, the following:

• Education
• Geriatrics
• Global health
• Hospital medicine
• Women’s health

See the sample three-year curriculum.

Primary Care Track: All categorical residents are invited to apply for this track after the match, and two residents are selected before their PGY-1 year begins. The program features longitudinal mentorship from primary care faculty, opportunities to participate in community health-based projects, conduct research on primary care topics, and access to additional primary care elective opportunities.

Clinician Investigator Training Program: This formal program offers six months of dedicated research time during residency. Unlike the primary care track, this research track is a separate application (NRMP 1328140C1) during the match, or it can be pursued through a PGY-2 application process.

Procedures and ultrasound curriculum

Ample training and experience are provided to gain expertise in procedures such as paracentesis, central line insertions, arthrocentesis and lumbar punctures. You’ll complete a procedure skills workshop before starting residency, and additional training throughout residency to refine these skills.

Early in your training, you will participate in a Procedure rotation, as well as a formal ultrasound curriculum with progression from simulation training on a virtual reality mannequin to active clinical acquisition with mentored review of archived images. During your PGY-3 year, you will have the opportunity to teach this curriculum to interns as part of our Enhancing Learning in Medicine curriculum (ELM). You may also elect to rotate on the pleural procedure team to gain experience in thoracentesis as well as in the ambulatory procedure clinic for additional experience performing outpatient procedures with or without ultrasound guidance. Finally, you will also have scheduled learning experiences in the Multidisciplinary Simulation Center.

Subspecialty rotations

Approximately half of the three-year program is spent in outpatient assignments, including outpatient clinics embedded in subspecialty rotations such as Endocrinology, Rheumatology, and Allergy and Immunology. Residents uniformly cite these ambulatory clinic experiences as an invaluable part of their training where they learn to practice high-quality, cost-effective outpatient medicine. Additionally, you will rotate through primary subspecialty services including Pulmonary Medicine, Cardiology, and Gastroenterology, and inpatient consultative services including Nephrology, Rheumatology, and Infectious Disease. You have the opportunity to pursue additional outpatient subspecialty clinics during elective months. 

Continuity clinics

To enhance both experiences, continuity clinics are only during outpatient training months, not during inpatient months. You will follow your own patient panel in the newly designed and integrated Department of Medicine Primary Care Clinic of Excellence for residents. The resident continuity clinic has been equipped with a high-tech observation system to allow trainees to have regularly observed clinical encounters by faculty, equipment to facilitate in-office procedures, and integrated services including in-house social workers and subspecialty providers to optimize patients’ access to health care resources. Residents are assigned a continuity clinic faculty mentor that meets with them to discuss their patient panel, inbasket management, and tips for clinic efficiency.

AI and digital transformation curriculum

Our AI and Digital Transformation curriculum prepares internal medicine residents to responsibly integrate digital transformation in clinical practice. Residents learn to critically appraise AI tools, identify meaningful clinical and workflow problems, and design solutions to improve patient care, safety, efficiency, and clinician experience. Through hands-on quality improvement projects, residents develop skills in stakeholder engagement, implementation science, change management, evaluation, and responsible AI governance. The curriculum prepares graduates not only to use emerging technologies thoughtfully, but to shape, evaluate, and lead the healthcare systems of tomorrow.

Enhancing learning in medicine (ELM) curriculum

At Mayo Clinic, we believe that all graduates should learn how to teach others, making it a core part of our curriculum instead of an optional track. This longitudinal curriculum equips residents with the tools they need to become medical educators. Learners receive dedicated didactics from chief residents on guiding clinical reasoning, giving feedback, delivering effective presentations, and optimizing the learning environment. Residents put these concepts into practice by delivering morning reports, supervising learners on inpatient medicine services, precepting them in outpatient continuity clinics, and teaching procedural techniques including POCUS.

Residents who desire additional experience n can pursue medical education electives by participating in the medical student core curriculum or community-based teaching.

Call frequency

In response to resident feedback, all residents no longer work more than 12 hours each duty period. 24-hour shifts have been replaced with 12-hour day call and night float schedules. All schedules are fully compliant with ACGME requirements.