Resident Research and Scholarship

Yale School of Medicine is one of the preeminent centers for biomedical, technological, and behavioral research. The principal sponsor of research for Yale School of Medicine is the federal government through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) which continually ranks Yale within the top 10 schools receiving funding nationwide.

All residents in the three-year categorical program are required to complete a scholarly activity project during residency. These projects can consist of case reports, literature reviews, curriculum development or hypothesis driven research. The resident research program is supervised by Dr. Donna Windish, professor of medicine and associate chair, Educational Scholarship, Department of Internal Medicine.

The primary goals of the resident scholarship requirement are to enhance the critical thinking skills of the residents as bedside clinicians, to facilitate scholarly thinking, creativity, and appreciation of the excitement in creating new knowledge in medicine and to broaden the scholarly sophistication of all elements of the residency program (i.e., morning report, peer teaching, work rounds, attending rounds, etc.).

Didactic and experiential components of the Residency Scholarship Curriculum occur during each year of training. The didactic components include a biostatistics course, an evidence-based medicine seminar series, and a structured journal club. In addition, a yearly Research in Residency retreat introduces residents to potential faculty mentors who are willing to mentor residents in a more in-depth project during their training.

Residents will be taught how to write a clinical vignette abstract that they will then submit to the Connecticut Chapter of the American College of Physicians (ACP) annual meeting or to the yearly New England Regional Society of General Internal Medicine (SGIM) meeting. Residents with the highest quality abstracts will also submit their work to the National ACP or the National SGIM meeting. Residents are also encouraged to develop an in-depth scholarly project during their PGY-2 and PGY-3 years. Projects can be in hypothesis-driven research, curriculum development, or community service. Residents pursuing hypothesis driven research or those developing an educational curriculum can spend one half-day per week during their PGY-2 and PGY-3 ambulatory block rotations to work on their projects. In addition, residents can also designate up to two months per year of elective time for research.

Please closely review the Research in Residency - FAQs for a more in-depth view of research in residency.

All PGY 3 residents present their work either as oral presentations or as posters at the PGY 3 retreat to the New England Regional Society of General Internal Medicine Meeting. Those who have completed hypothesis driven research projects also present their work at the department’s “Annual Research in Residency Day Symposium” also held each May. Residents are encouraged to submit their research to regional and national scientific meetings and funding is available to support residents to attend these meetings to present their work.