Rotation Details

Below you can find a description of teams, types of patients admitted, and common diseases encountered.

Hellerstein

The Hellerstein Team is composed of four interns, two senior residents, a dedicated cardiology fellow, and a staff cardiologist. This team takes care of patients with a variety of cardiology diagnoses including acute myocardial infarctions, decompensated heart failure, and valvular disorders. Interns and residents are exposed to detailed interpretation of EKGs, cardiac catheterization films, echocardiograms, and stress tests.

Ratnoff/Weisman

There are two hematology/oncology housestaff teams at University Hospitals Seidman Cancer Center. Each team is comprised of two interns and one senior resident with a hematology/oncology faculty attending or a hematology/oncology hospitalist attending. Residents and interns are exposed to patients with known solid tumor malignancy, blood cell dyscrasia, or complications from chemotherapy. A multi-disciplinary approach including social work, palliative care, nutrition, physical therapy, and pharmacy is utilized for these complex patients.

Carpenter

Carpenter is the infectious disease team composed of two interns and one senior resident with an infectious diseases faculty attending. All patients with HIV-related conditions are admitted to this inpatient service. Encephalitis, meningitis, infectious endocarditis, cellulitis, and pulmonary infections are just a few other disease processes encountered on this team. Our program director, Dr. Keith Armitage, serves as one of the exceptional attendings on this service.

Dworken

Dworken is the inpatient gastroenterology service comprised of two interns, one senior resident, a gastroenterology fellow, and two staff gastroenterologists. The team rounds separately on general gastroenterology and hepatology patients. During this rotation, residents are exposed to patients with end-stage liver disease and its complications, inflammatory bowel disease, biliary tract disease, and pancreatic disease. Housestaff also have the opportunity to view colonoscopies, EGDs, and more complex studies on their patients.

Naff/Wearn/Wright

The three general medicine house staff teams at UH Case Medical Center are each comprised of two interns, one resident, and a teaching hospitalist. Patients on these services are often undifferentiated with respect to diagnosis; thus, the work-up is comprehensive and broad (think “House”). Exposure to complex rheumatologic and endocrine diagnoses is common on these teams. The faculty who attend are exceptional diagnosticians and teachers.

Eckel

Eckel is our renal team which includes a combination of inpatient care of patients with renal disease and renal consults. This is a 4-week rotation and interns spend 1/3 of the rotation on the renal consult service and 2/3 on our inpatient renal ward team.

Cherniack

Cherniack is a pulmonary disease rotation composed of two interns and one senior resident with a Pulmonary/Critical Care faculty attending. Patients with lung transplants, cystic fibrosis, and other complicated pulmonary conditions are admitted to this team.

UH MICU

The UH MICU team is comprised of four interns, four senior residents, two pulmonary/critical care fellows, and a staff intensivist. During this rotation, you will became familiar with hypovolemic and distributive shock, fulminant liver failure, blast crises, toxic ingestions, and ventilator management. The UH MICU is uniformly accepted as one of the best inpatient residency experiences, mostly as a result of high patient acuity, complex multidisciplinary issues, and an abundance of procedures available for every resident level.

UH CICU

The UH CICU team is composed of five senior residents, one day intern, one night intern, a cardiology fellow, and a staff cardiologist. Residents actively participate in the care of patients with cardiogenic shock, ST-elevation myocardial infarction, ventricular arrhythmias, high-grade heart blocks, massive pulmonary emboli, and refractory heart failure requiring LV assistance devices or transplants. The staff cardiologists rotating through the UH CICU are tremendous teachers, and most residents feel proficient at basic cardiac imaging following this rotation.

VA Cardiology

The VA Cardiology service is composed of five senior residents. There is also a cardiology fellow and staff cardiologist per team. This rotation exposes residents to patients with general cardiology diagnoses as well as those requiring CICU care.

VA Wards

There are four general medicine housestaff teams at the VA. Each team is comprised of two interns and one senior resident with a teaching attending. Attendings at the VA can be general internists or specialists. Residents and interns often comment that the level of autonomy, complexity of comorbid illness in their patients, and quality of teaching at the VA helps build their clinical confidence.

VA MICU

Three interns, one senior resident, a pulmonary/critical care fellow, and an intensivist make up the VA MICU service. The VA MICU is a closed unit with an abundance of procedures available as well. Typically not as busy as the UH MICU, this rotation allows interns and residents to care for critically ill patients, while at the same time allowing for plenty of concurrent learning and education.

UH Nightfloat

The UH nightfloat team is composed of two second-year admitting residents working alongside a third-year night-time acting chief resident, who triages the admissions. There are also three interns on nightfloat who deal with cross-cover issues, and admit 1-2 patients. Residents and interns are usually assigned between 2-4 weeks of nightfloat per year.

VA Nightfloat

The VA nightfloat team is composed of a second-year admitting resident and one intern who handle cross-cover issues for the housestaff teams.

Elective

Categorical interns have 4 weeks of elective time, usually distributed into two 2-week blocks. Second and third year residents progressively gain more elective time in their schedule (between 8-12 weeks). There is no set curriculum for electives; in fact, housestaff can even choose to do electives outside of the Department of Medicine. One strength of our program is the flexibility of elective time, and housestaff often choose to rotate on inpatient consults, outpatient specialty clinics, or participate in research. Furthermore, you can split your individual elective time between multiple adventures!