Upon entry into the Training Program, each house officer is paired up with both a Chief Resident and with a Program Director, who serve as "buddies" for that house officer.
House officers meet formally twice per year with a Program Director to review performance, discuss career plans or fellowship applications, and any other pertinent issues. However, the Program Directors pride themselves on being available to any resident for any issue whenever they should arise, and their doors are always open to house staff and students.
The buddy systems allows for residents to get to know and be known by one program director and one chief resident more intesively and in a longitudinal way, and serves as the initial mentoring structure (see below for more on mentoring.)
Chief Residents provide one-on-one evaluation, counseling and advice to their house officer buddies. Remediation, if necessary, is carried out in a structured but comfortable way with the goal of making the trainee feel supported.
The Research Society
The research society was initiated to help foster mentorship relationships, and broaden the academic interests and opportunities for our house staff. Since its inception the society has allowed interested Internal Medicine house staff early in their training to seek out supervised guidance, mentorship, and research opportunities. The research society continues to provide efficient streamlining of our institutions research efforts, thereby enhancing faculty and house staff academic productivity by bringing their research to fruition, publication, and national recognition. This project has, and continues to provide invaluable guidance, acknowledgment, and academic support for all our house staff.
Mentoring
There are different types of mentoring, and our system allows for each trainee to gravitate towards the mentor-mentee framework they prefer. Of course, every resident always has their program director buddy and their chief buddy. But many house officers naturally connect with subspecialty faculty who come to serve as mentors based on common interests, either professional or personal.
Peer to peer mentoring is another recognized and important concept, and one that we are proud to say exists at Beth Israel. House staff will often work with a Fellow who helps guide them in the development of a project. The high level of research collaboration between Fellows and House Staff attests to the close relationship between these two groups of trainees.
House staff interested in research can also be paired up with a research mentor in the subspecialty they are interested in. All of our divisional faculty, including and especially the division chiefs themselves, are extremely accessible to house staff.
The Summer Research Presentation Series
Throughout July and August of each year, all the subspeciality divisions in the Department of Medicine formally present their ongoing research projects to the new house staff. This gives incoming house staff an eoverview of what is going on in each division, and helps identify faculty and fellows that they can contact for further guidance and research pursuits.
