Best Internal Medicine Lectures
Meinard Hartmann
An IM-focused, case-based, medical reasoning podcast. The hosts look at cases and walk through their train of thought to come up with the final diagnosis. This podcast is perfect for anyone looking to develop their clinical reasoning and form differential diagnoses.
Each episode dives into a key medical topic. They explore the details of pathophysiology and critique the evidence behind clinical practice. The evidence is particularly helpful for residents and final-stage medical students.
The Curbsiders podcast uses expert interviews to share clinical insights, address common internal medicine pain points, and help you learn and practice medicine. They also have podcasts that focus on pediatrics, addiction medicine, and medical education.
This biweekly, 20 minute podcast deals with critical care, resuscitation, and trauma. Each episode aims to bring the best evidence-based information from each of these fields, so you can improve your patient care in the emergency department or intensive care unit.
The Nocturnists is a community of healthcare workers who use storytelling to answer some of the existential questions in medicine and bring clinicians together. The podcast includes stories from their live performances, personal stories from healthcare professionals, and interviews with artists who deal with medical themes.
A clinically orientated podcast about infectious diseases. It uses consult questions to look at ID clinical reasoning, diagnostics, and antimicrobial management. New episodes are released every 1-2 weeks.
In rating the effectiveness of their study methods, physicians rate internal medicine board review courses somewhat more favorably than independent study using textbooks (the most widely-used method), but somewhat less favorably than independent study using print or online question banks.
The best internal medicine board review course for you will depend on many personal factors ranging from cost to your preferred way of learning. To help you determine which factors are most important to you, we interviewed a number of our survey participants to find out their reasons for enrolling in internal medicine board review courses and the criteria they used for selecting specific course offerings.
In choosing specific internal medicine board review courses, most physicians appear to strongly consider producer reputation, time, and cost. For example, in studying for his spring 2014 ABIM recertification exam, general internist Dr. Reynaldo Alonso of the Bronx, NY knew his learning preference would be for a live course:
I would think the internal medicine board exam might be more daunting for those who have specialized in their careers but still wish to maintain their internal medicine certifications. As a general internist, I see many different things every day in practice, so this course was all I really needed to feel confident and to pass my exam.
For my internal medicine boards, I chose a live course, but for pediatrics, I selected a DVD course. I chose the live course because it was relatively nearby, and I had an opportunity to stay with friends. I was also able to take off an entire week to devote to the course. My residency program provided educational funding, and the course was created by a reputable organization. Also, there was no DVD option for the particular course I had chosen, while other DVD courses were available to me through my residency library.
The real benefit with online courses is that you can log in anytime, so they are a good fit when you cannot put together the blocks of time needed for live courses. When my children were small, I will admit I preferred the longer-distance courses, because being away from the daily demands of family life made it much easier to focus on review. When you attend courses locally, it can be more difficult to separate from your daily concerns and to focus only on the course material.
Deciding when to schedule an internal medicine review course can be somewhat tricky. On the one hand, physicians may be inclined to enroll in courses very close to their exam dates in order to maximize memory retention of the material covered. Dr. Hamilton advises a different tactic:
You want to take your course far enough ahead of time for it to be useful in directing supplemental study. Internal medicine board review courses will often cover newer content that you might need to know. They are very good at bringing physicians up-to-date in areas where they may not have concentrated their own consumption of medical research, journals, and so forth. Board review courses are a great way to gain insights into the areas where you need to study more and review relevant research and literature prior to taking your exam. You want to make sure that you leave yourself sufficient time to do that follow-up study.
Both of the courses I took were psychologically reassuring. While the universe of what there is to know in medicine is almost infinite, it was a relief to know it is possible to go through [what the boards view as] the most important points of medicine in one week! That way I could focus more on the parts of the review course in which I had weaknesses. This helped my confidence more than anything else. When I actually took the boards, I based my answers for 50% of the questions on practical experience; another 30% of my answers were based on experience with practice questions. The number of extra questions I could answer because of the board review courses was probably between 5 and 20%, but that small margin was very comforting in terms of helping me to prioritize my time.
An interesting perspective on internal medicine board review courses and preparation for board certification in general came from Dr. John Wolfe Blotzer, who has worn many hats throughout his medical career, including chief resident, fellow, educator, academic dean, residency program director, clinical practitioner, and even a board-review course lecturer.
At the time of the survey, Dr. Blotzer had recently retired, but still held multiple board certifications (internal medicine, rheumatology, and geriatrics). He had lifelong certification in internal medicine, but still chose to undergo regular assessments of his medical knowledge and to recertify at recommended (albeit not required) intervals throughout his career.
I believe all physicians have an ethical duty to stay up-to-date with their medical knowledge and have never believed that I should be held to a different standard than others in the field. In the early 2000s, I sat for three board exams within a short time frame. It was exhausting, but I truly believe in the importance of keeping up-to-date.
That approach must have worked as Dr. Blotzer passed each certification or recertification exam both with high scores and without other specific preparation or board review courses. What is more, he felt the examinations had become easier over time as a result of making studying and learning a routine part of his practice.
Asked how he might advise others who are preparing for medical board certification and considering courses, Dr. Blotzer said that, above all else, he would recommend introspection about individual learning styles, understanding varying practice settings (for example, academic versus purely clinical), and maintaining habits for staying up-to-date with medical knowledge.
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Introduction: Systemic inequities and provider-held biases reinforce racism and further disparities in graduate medical education. We developed the Department of Medicine Anti-Racism and Equity Educational Initiative (DARE) to improve internal medicine residency conferences. We trained faculty and residents to serve as coaches to support other faculty in delivering lectures. The training leveraged a best-practices checklist to revise existing lectures.
Methods: We recruited internal medicine faculty and residents to serve as DARE coaches, who supported educators in improving lectures' anti-racism content. During the training, coaches watched a videotaped didactic presentation that we created about health equity and anti-racism frameworks. DARE coaches then participated in a workshop where they engaged in case-based learning and small-group discussion to apply the DARE best-practices checklist to sample lecture slides. To assess training effectiveness, coaches completed pre- and posttraining assessments in which they edited different sample lecture slides. Our training took 1 hour to complete.
Discussion: Training residents and faculty to use DARE principles in delivering internal medicine lectures is an innovative and effective way to integrate anti-racism into internal medicine residency conferences.
ACP Journal Club helps you stay current with the latest evidence-based clinical information relevant to internal medicine and its subspecialties. Reviewing over 120 leading medical journals, this monthly feature in Annals of Internal Medicine contains an editorial, easy to read abstracts, and a page of other notable articles.
The mission of the University of Louisville Internal Medicine Residency Program is to provide comprehensive education in general internal medicine which fully prepares its graduates to practice compassionate and evidence-based medicine in a variety of settings. We strive to create a supportive and challenging learning environment that offers strong mentorship, values diversity and inclusiveness, encourages intellectual curiosity and lifelong learning, and teaches physicians to work in inter-professional teams and to realize their roles as advocates for their patients and in their communities.
Welcome to the University of Louisville Internal Medicine Residency Program web page. I am glad that you have taken a few moments to get to know us better.
I am often asked by applicants, "What sets UofL apart from other residency programs?"