Resident Research

Scholarship is integral to residency training in Internal Medicine.  At Wake Forest residents pursue scholarship through a variety of pathways:

Patient-centered clinical investigation
Laboratory based research
Health services research
Outcomes-based quality improvement projects

• In order to provide guidance, the Department of Medicine maintains a list of available faculty research mentors and active research projects appropriate for resident involvement.  Our faculty welcomes and encourages resident participation in established projects as well as providing mentoring for the development of new proposals.  Every section of the Department (General Medicine and subspecialties) has identified a faculty member as the research liasison to the residents.
• The Residency Program supports the scheduling of research electives during the HO2 and HO3 years and provides funds for resident presentations at regional and national meetings.  Residents participating in research electives submit a written proposal outlining their research question, underlying hypotheses and experimental design.
• Residents may fulfill the scholarship requirement through participation in Quality Improvement projects in the hospital, clinic, or community.
• Wake Forest offers a Research Pathway for selected residents with exceptional interest in a career as a physician-scientist.  The goal of this pathway is to identify and help prepare young physicians with a research background and specific research interests for careers in basic or clinical research.  Residents interested in the Research Pathway are identified during the application process allowing time for coordination of residency training with subsequent subspecialty fellowship.  Residents on the Research Pathway complete two years of clinical residency prior to beginning their subspecialty fellowship.  Details of the ABIM Research Pathway are available through the ABIM website:  www.abim.org/cert/respath_pp.shtm