Internal Medicine Residency Program

Miriam Parker, MD, FACP, Program Director A core group of full-time Internal Medicine faculty members, complemented by a team of dedicated voluntary board-certified attendings, provide a dynamic teaching environment to Internal Medicine residents.

The program, which is fully accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, is directed by Miriam Parker M.D a general internist and respected teacher of medicine. She serves as assistant clinical professor with the Medical College of Georgia. Prior to joining Atlanta Medical Center in 1997, Dr. Parker served as assistant clinical professor of medicine at Emory University where her specific areas of interest included preoperative evaluation and physical diagnosis. A fellow of the American College of Physicians and member of Alpha Omega Alpha, Dr. Parker is actively involved in resident education in both the inpatient and ambulatory care arenas.

The patient population is an intellectually challenging mix of referrals from within the Atlanta Medical Center system, large primary care private practice groups, smaller community hospitals as well as patients from disadvantaged socioeconomic status groups. Atlanta Medical Center’s commitment to advanced services is exemplified by cardiac catheterization suites with state-of-the-art equipment, a fully operational sleep laboratory and PET scanning capabilities. Recent hospital expansions have included additional Neuro-Intensive Care beds as well as a newly remodeled Emergency Room with chart automation.

Residents are an integral part of the inpatient medicine and subspecialty teams at Atlanta Medical Center, providing care for a wide variety of patients with close attending supervision. Inpatient clinical support services are available on a 24-hour basis including laboratory and radiological information retrieval systems. The on-campus medical library is available 24 hours a day for electronic medical searching and journal access. Rotations are available in all internal medicine subspecialties including geriatrics.

The Internal Medicine faculty is comprised of eight full-time Internal Medicine faculty with expertise in a variety of subspecialties, the chief resident and a large cohort of voluntary attendings. The resident-to-full-time faculty ration is 4:1. Residents can expect exceptional close contact with their attending physicians, allowing for an outstanding learning environment. Interaction with residents and attendings from other disciplines fosters a strong academic environment in which to cultivate excellent clinical skills.

Curriculum

Ten PGY-1 positions are available for the academic year 2009-10. The PGY-1 experience includes eight months of inpatient medicine (internal medicine wards, cardiology, ICU and infectious disease) and one month each of emergency room, neurology and an ambulatory outpatient block. Additional exposure to metabolic support rotation is required of all interns. When averaged over the course of their PGY-1 year, interns can expect to be on call every 4-5 nights.

The PGY-2 and PGY-3 years allow for increased elective time within outpatient rotations. In-house call for those two years averages approximately 1:7. During those two years, residents complete rotations in all internal medicine subspecialty areas and are able to tailor their schedules according to their future career plans. Residents wishing to remain in ambulatory medicine are afforded the opportunity to select rotations in such areas as dermatology, exercise stress testing, rural medicine, and allergy/immunology.

The internal medicine residency includes a schedule of prescribed learning experiences, accomplished in a variety of teaching settings. Two formal conferences are provided daily to all residents in addition to informal didactic teaching by individual teaching faculty. Core curriculum lectures given at lunch are complemented by Morning Report, Journal Club, Chief Conference, Case of the Week, Morbidity and Mortality Conference, and a weekly Board Review lecture series.. Such diverse opportunities for learning ensure the residents' mastery of the knowledge and skills required to practice general internal medicine or pursue subspecialty training.

Throughout their three years of training, residents maintain a continuity clinic at the Sheffield Health Care Center one-half day per week where they care for a patient of patients with a wide variety of medical problems. The small faculty-to-resident ratio within the clinic optimizes resident learning opportunities in outpatient medicine. Residents are able to follow their own patients from the outpatient to the inpatient setting and thus gain invaluable experience in longitudinal care. Preventive medicine is stressed, and residents provide routine gynecologic care to their female patients.

Residents are strongly encouraged to participate in research projects that lead to publication and/or presentations at regional and national scientific meetings. In recent years residents have been active participants in meetings of the American College of Physicians (ACP), The Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM) and the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA). Resident participation in such activities is fully supported by Atlanta Medical Center.

Benefits

In addition to the standard benefit package, residents in Internal Medicine receive a generous educational stipend which can be used for the following:

membership in the American College of Physicians
subscription to the New England Journal of Medicine
personal digital assistant (PDA) – maximum $250 offset
board review materials (MKSAP and MedStudy)
online subscription to Up-To-Date
payment of NBME Step III fees
continuing medical education in their PGY-2 and PGY-3 years
conference participation
other educational items approved by the Program Director

as well as a monthly allowance for on-call meals.

The current annual resident PGY-1 salary for the academic year beginning July 1, 2009 is $43,541

After Residency

Upon completion of residency training, our residents choose a variety of career paths. Historically about 25 percent of each graduating class has entered fellowship training with the remaining graduates entering private practice or accepting positions as hospitalists. Over the past five years, residents have been accepted into fellowship training in gastroenterology, hematology/oncology, infectious disease, endocrinology, rheumatology and geriatrics at a variety of academic centers such as Emory University, University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Health System, University of Virginia, University of Minnesota, University of S. Florida (Tampa), University of S. Carolina (Charleston) and University of Memphis.

Internal Medicine Faculty

Miriam Parker, MD, FACP
Program Director
General Internal Medicine
Assistant Clinical Professor, Medical College of Georgia

Louis Lovett, MD, FACP, FCCP
Associate Program Director
Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine
Associate Clinical Professor, Medical College of Georgia

Brian Pearlman, MD, FACP
General Internal Medicine
Director, Center for Hepatitis C
Associate Clinical Professor, Medical College of Georgia
Associate Clinical Professor, Emory University

Israel Orija, MD, FACP, FACE
Endocrinology and Metabolism

Robert Osburne, MD, MBA
Endocrinology and Metabolism

Nomi Traub MD
General Internal Medicine

Tanna Lim MD
General Internal Medicine

Daniel Frilingos MD
General Internal Medicine

Nishant Shroff MD
General Internal Medicine

Edwin Pimentel Brugal MD
Chief Medical Resident
Academic Year 2009-10

303 Parkway Drive Ne, Atlanta, GA 30312 | 404-265-4000

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