Ambulatory Training

Over the course of three years of training, our primary care residents benefit from numerous robust clinical experiences within outpatient general internal medicine and its subspecialties. This experience is gained through rotations in a variety of settings including private general internal medicine, private practice and university subspecialty offices, and their own continuity clinic practice.

While on ambulatory block, residents at all PGY levels maintain their weekly continuity clinic. In addition, all of the residents on ambulatory block convene on Fridays for our dedicated ambulatory medicine curriculum, which includes lectures, interactive seminars, peer teaching, self-directed learning, workshops, and off-site experiences.

Ambulatory Training PGY I-III

PGY-I: Interns have a minimum of 18 weeks of ambulatory time that is composed of twelve weeks of Ambulatory Blocks at your continuity site, a two week orientation block at 150 Sargent, known as the COMET block, to kickstart your year, two weeks on a predominantly outpatient geriatrics rotation, and two weeks in the Emergency Department. Ambulatory Blocks include weekly continuity clinics, an in-depth psychosocial curriculum, rotations through several core outpatient subspecialty clinics that are predominantly on-site at 150 Sargent, protected time for practice-based reflection and quality improvement projects, and participation in our celebrated Ambulatory Didactics curriculum. Outpatient subspecialty offerings during these blocks include on-site clinics devoted to addiction medicine, diabetes disease management, primary care psychiatry, dermatology, rheumatology, the refugee clinic, and hepatitis C treatment, as well as off-site experiences in women’s health and neurology.

Described in more detail elsewhere, the intern psychosocial curriculum is a cornerstone of the Yale Primary Care Program and includes a psychiatry consult clinic and a medical interviewing practicum that includes review of videotaped patient encounters. Lastly, interns have dedicated time each week devoted to our residency-wide Community Engagement Curriculum.
PGY-II: Second year residents spend a minimum of 20 weeks devoted to ambulatory training. This includes a total of 12 weeks in dedicated ambulatory block rotations at 150 Sargent, a required 2 week Innovations in Primary Care rotation, and 6 weeks spent in off-site community primary care teaching practices of their choosing. In addition, residents can choose among a variety of primary-care focused experiences for their 6 weeks of elective time, including areas such as policy and advocacy, narrative medicine, business of medicine, home visit experiences, and quality improvement.

The ambulatory block rotations for PGY-II residents otherwise mirror those of the intern class.
PGY-III: Third year residents also spend a minimum of 20 weeks devoted to ambulatory training, including 2 weeks of Emergency Medicine. Their experience otherwise mirrors that of the PGY-II residents.