Message from the Program Director

 Thank you very much for your interest in the Internal Medicine Residency Program at Jacobi Medical Center. We are very excited about the program and hope you will peruse the website to learn more. I would like to tell you a little about some of our time-tested strengths and newest changes.  

 The reason I came to Jacobi (August 2007) is that this is an amazing place. Where to start? I guess firstly we offer our trainees (and attendings!) an absolutely unparalleled clinical experience. From the housestaff perspective this derives from two main factors. One is the unbelievable diversity of our patients. No single socioeconomic, ethnic, racial group or nationality comprises more than 20% of the service. Patients literally come from next door and from all over the world. You will see common diseases in common and very uncommon presentations and uncommon, even rare, diseases (in this country) present in common ways. After training here you will truly be able to “make it anywhere”.

 A second factor is the relative autonomy residents are given in a NYC public hospital. As a trainee you will make real decisions on the care of real patients. The patients are “yours”. For those who have done part of their medical school training in private institutions, you know full well that at times the experience can be one of being an observer or at best an apprentice to the main decision makers, that is the patient’s private physician. Here at Jacobi, you have to “put your nickel down” and use all the resources (see below and elsewhere) at your disposal and your own clinical judgment. This is not to say at all that you will be simply left to your own devices. Quite to the contrary, each and every patient has an attending who is a full-time, Einstein faculty clinician-educator and who is ultimately responsible for the care delivered. Someone is always available. Beyond senior residents, Chief residents, fellows from all medical and non-medical subspecialties and your attending, there is a licensed attending physician in house 24/7. So here you get the best possible mix of supervised, safe autonomy.

 Getting to our electronic resources for a moment, I hope you can understand how immeasurably our full Electronic Medical Record (EMR) will change your day to day job as a resident and allow you to focus on patient care, rather than data acquisition. Please see our full description on this valuable and sadly uncommon capability in the “Electronic Resources” section of this website. Briefly, we have the most complete EMR in the city, if not the country. Our inpatient and outpatient chart is the same. We have labs, EKGs, Radiology, Echocardiograms and all else going back decades. As other institutions are dipping their toes into the pond of EMR's and slowly transitioning and have parts on paper and parts in an EMR, we are the whole, real deal.

 One cannot go too far in describing the training experience here at Jacobi without emphasizing our real geographic and academic connection to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (AECOM). Jacobi and AECOM were created together to fully complement each other in 1955.You will be a teacher of students here. You will be taught by faculty both clinical and basic science. Many of our residents achieve real and significant research accomplishments via this relationship. This of course, is wonderful for career selection as well as fellowship applications.

 Finally, beyond the “classic” advantages at Jacobi such as those described above and elsewhere, there are many brand new ones as well. We are proud of our new hospital; that is the “new Jacobi”. Very few hospitals are building new buildings anywhere in the country, let alone NYC. This new hospital was opened two years ago and affords all the modern conveniences. In addition, we have just opened (August 2008) our new Ambulatory Pavilion next door to the new hospital. Housing the Department’s outpatient services, this state-of-the-art facility is most impressive. We used to have to apologize for our physical plant; it is now a distinct advantage and serves to fully compliment all of our clinical and educational efforts.

 I hope you can sense the excitement we all have surrounding our Program. Things continue to get better and better. For example, we have recently added two full-time Associate Program Directors. Bringing our full complement of Program Directors to 5 (One Program Director and four Associate Directors). This allows us to be able to offer each trainee in our large program individualized attention as each Director is an assigned mentor to 20 or fewer trainees. In this way, we have created a “small program” out of a big program, giving the trainee the distinct advantages of each.

 So please take a good, long look at Jacobi. Ask lots of questions, speak to lots of housestaff and make sure to read on elsewhere on the website about our fantastic successes in fellowship placements, our significantly above average compensation and benefits and all about the residential, family-friendly corner of the Bronx in which we are located. I thank you again for considering Jacobi and hope you find yourself as impressed and amazed as I was when I decided to come here myself.

 Sincerely,

Bill Rifkin, M.D.

Residency Program Director

Department of Medicine, Jacobi Medical Center

Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine

Albert Einstein College of Medicine