Internal Medicine Inland Empire - Curriculum

Goals and Objectives

The Kaiser Permanente Southern California Internal Medicine Residency – Inland Empire is designed to provide broad-based clinical training with an emphasis on patient-centered team-based medicine. The goal of our program is to train outstanding comprehensive internists capable of managing diverse patients with a broad range of diseases. This training is essential not only for those clinicians who will pursue a career in general internal medicine, but also for those residents who are planning on further subspecialty training.

Mentorship

Our approach to mentorship is front and center to much of our residency uniqueness. Each resident is paired with a faculty mentor and a big sibling resident. Through a blend of organic conversations with mentors and a family-like support that is intrinsic within our residency, our residents learn essential skills, provide high quality care, and have fun during that process together.

Clinical Experiences

Each of the postgraduate years is divided into 13 blocks of four weeks each. Graduates will be well trained to progress to careers in ambulatory medical care, hospitalist work, or choose to pursue fellowship training.

Patient care rotations support an enabling environment for residents to study and attend conferences. All patients seen by the general medicine service are considered teaching cases.

Inpatient Wards

Our wards experience is an integrated care experience— Resident teams at Fontana and Riverside work alongside an attending, case manager, and nursing to provide top quality patient care. Practicing at a Kaiser Permanente hospital, residents attend multidisciplinary rounds to discuss patient discharge needs and position services of social workers, hospice liaisons, and therapists to expedite patient care needs through the critical days of hospitalization..

Inpatient Resident Teams consist of an attending, a senior resident, 1-2 interns, and 2 medical students.

Residents and students work in a dedicated hospital work space near the wards, with attending support and supervision. Morning rounds are a key element of team based decision making and directed learning to optimize resident education and top quality patient care.

In lieu of overnight call experiences, residents cover hospital shifts as night float clinicians with faculty supervision, gaining important experience at night.

Teaching Experiences

Teaching is the highest form of learning! Our medical centers are core training sites for the KP Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine, UC Riverside, Loma Linda University School of Medicine, and visiting students from across the nation. Our residents are front line educators working alongside students to hone their skills. Focused conferences geared toward resident as teacher are interspersed within the didactic curriculum. We welcome your interest in teaching skills in both inpatient and outpatient environments.

Ambulatory Experiences

Residents rotate through Primary Care sites at our Fontana and Moreno Valley (Meridian) sites. Residents care for a panel of patients throughout their training and have unparalleled support from their faculty colleagues and back office staff. A weekly educational conference led by outpatient faculty based on the Yale Office Based Curriculum is built into protected time for the resident in afternoon clinic.

At Fontana, residents gain valuable experience with Point of Care Ultrasound, arthrocentesis, skin excisions, and I&D procedures.

All KP clinics feature robust nursing and case management support, with integration to subspecialty referral, protocol driven diabetes and hypertension support.

Al Shifa Community Clinic

We believe deeply in serving the community around us, including our underserved population in San Bernardino County. On Tuesday afternoons, all Ambulatory residents rotate through our Al Shifa Community Clinic every week. We’re grateful to be partners with this missional free clinic, providing critical primary care services alongside like-minded nurses and dentists.

Schedule of Experiences, 2025-2026 starting class

IM Subspecialty: Select among Nephrology, Rheumatology, ID, Endocrinology, Heme-Onc, GI, Pulmonology

(1 block=4 weeks)

Resident Research

Our residents are regularly involved in presenting for regional ACP conferences and our KP SBC Research Fair.

Projects often take the form of Clinical Vignettes, Original Research, or Quality Improvement.
Residents with interest in subspecialty fellowship are encouraged to pursue research with dedicated mentors at our two host medical centers. Residents have had excellent success in conducting population based research or Quality Improvement research relevant to their career interests, an element vital to our fellowship matches.

Our resident research committee is also available to assist in directing residents toward potential projects.

Performance Improvement

Residents of the program actively participate in at least one performance improvement project during their residency training. Our Performance Improvement team supports these projects through development to implementation, to allow residents to develop lifelong skills in systems-based practice and learn within the successful quality improvement-based system that Kaiser Permanente represents.

Didactic Curriculum

We created an academic half day on Wednesday afternoons to provide residents a focused time to “learn” and “do”. During this protected half day, residents have the following built in experiences:

• Topic Lectures from our Subspecialty Faculty
• Quality Improvement reviews of patient cases
• Journal Club
• Board Review
• Code Blue simulation workshops
• Bioethics
• POCUS Workshops

In addition, our program has dedicated time for:
* Morning Reports (Tuesdays and Fridays)
* Ambulatory Small Group Curriculum (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday @ 2pm)
* Grand Rounds with the Center and IM department

POCUS & Procedures

Point of Care Ultrasound (POCUS) and Procedural experience is an important part of training for our residents. In addition to our protected POCUS workshops, residents are often engaged by inpatient and outpatient faculty to use handheld Ultrasound to augment their physical exam. GE V-scan and Philips Lumify units are readily available in both settings to be used by residents in appropriate cases. Full-scale Ultrasound equipment is used in our ICU and ER settings to provide additional opportunities for our residents. New to Academic Year 2023-24, residents have been given opportunities to do POCUS rounds with our inpatient attendings as part of a “POCUS posse.”

From a procedural standpoint, residents are in the Interventional Radiology suite and on call in the Ward/ICU settings to assist with procedures that need to be done that day.

Simulation/Code Blue

Simulation of Code Blue and Procedural experience takes place at our state of the art Simulation Center at KP Fontana Medical Center. These dedicated half day experiences involve resident groups engaging in Code Blue exercises with debriefing and coaching in a low stakes environment. Adjacent to our simulation center are spacious conference rooms and the Wellness Center where residents gather for discussion and casual meetings.