It is my pleasure to welcome you to the Brown Internal Medicine website. I hope that you will find it to be user-friendly and that you can get many of your questions answered while visiting. We are very proud of our Internal medicine training program here at Brown University Health and are eager to engage those of you who are interested in applying. It is a time of great change in Internal Medicine as programs throughout the country are accommodating to the many changes in our practices both in the hospital and in the ambulatory setting. We are proud of how we have adjusted and are eager to be at the forefront of establishing new ways of caring for patients into the future.
It is an exciting time here at Brown University Health. After sixteen years as Chair of this Department of Medicine, I will be stepping down at the end of September. I am thrilled that we have been able to attract Kelly Dooley, MD, PhD, MPH as our next Chair. Kelly is currently serving as the Chief of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, a position she has held for four years after a distinguished faculty career at Johns Hopkins Medical School. She is world renowned for her research into antimicrobial regimens for the treatment of tuberculosis and has research projects that span the globe. She is also a highly respected clinician and educator and an honest and genuine leader. It gives me great comfort to know that the leadership of this Department will be in such capable hands.
Rachel Simmons is our residency program director, and she is joined by a team of 8 dedicated associate program directors. Rachel has continued our ethos of individual support and mentorship and has improved our rotation schedule and increased ambulatory education opportunities for residents. Rachel and her colleagues are constantly looking for ways to improve and expand our training opportunities in ways large and small. The major change we are instituting this year is a shift to an X + Y schedule for our house staff. This change has been in the works for a year and a half and is intended to provide more consistent support for our inpatient rotations as well as more focused ambulatory time and didactic periods. By all accounts, the transition is proceeding smoothly.
I hope from looking at our website that you get a sense for the culture of our program, which in my estimation is its greatest strength. I am continually impressed by the sense of community demonstrated by our residents: community with each other, with the faculty and staff, with our patients and with the broader community at large. It is this sense of community and mutual support that is the hallmark of our program and, in my opinion, the component that is most critical to retain.
So take a look around and please feel free to contact us with any questions you may have.
Louis B. Rice, MD
Chairman, Department of Medicine