Is Riverside Community Hospital a busy one? 

Riverside Community Hospital is quite busy! It has over 500 beds, with 69 ICU beds, and has one of the busiest emergency departments in Southern California. RCH has an accredited chest pain center, STEMI center, TAVR program, comprehensive stroke center, kidney- and pancreas-transplant programs, and comprehensive cancer center. It is also the only Level 1 Trauma Center in Riverside County. 

How is your program schedule structured? 

Our categorical residents are scheduled according to a 4+1 format.

Where do your residents rotate? 

All inpatient rotations are at Riverside Community Hospital. Our categorical residents’ continuity clinics are located within 3 miles of the hospital: Riverside Medical Clinic, Platinum Providers Medical Clinic, and Altais Medical Group. The majority of subspecialty clinics are located in the city of Riverside. 

What do your residents do after graduation? 

The post-graduate plans for our residents run the gamut! Our residents have gone on to hospitalist and primary care positions throughout Orange County, Los Angeles, the Inland Empire, and beyond. They have joined private practices, health care organizations like Kaiser, and academic groups, including the internal medicine faculty here at Riverside Community Hospital. We have had fellowship matches in cardiology, gastroenterology, critical care, nephrology, hematology/oncology, rheumatology, palliative care, and infectious disease.

What changes do you anticipate in the coming year? 

We continue to invest heavily in handheld ultrasound training. We have developed new rotations to provide our residents with additional hands-on experience. In fact, each of our wards teams has its own hand-held ultrasound to incorporate into rounds and to direct patient care. This is in addition to our procedure workshop series in our simulation lab where we go over skills such as central line placement, thoracentesis, lumbar puncture, and pap smear.  

This coming year, we plan to further invest in our hospitalist and primary care medicine tracks. In addition, the gastroenterology and interventional cardiology programs are welcoming its first fellows in July 2023, and pulmonology is expected to begin recruitment for their first class in the coming year.  

In addition, a housing stipend has been secured for the 2023-2024 academic year. 

How do you help prepare your residents for the American Board of Internal Medicine? 

This year, all residents were given a subscription to ACP Medical Knowledge Self-Assessment Program (MKSAP). PGY-3 residents also received UWorld for board preparation, and were enrolled in Awesome Review—a highly-rated board review course. We have also developed subject-based practice exams to help guide studying and track progress over time. Additionally, we offer longitudinal board review curricula led by multispecialty faculty and Chief residents. 

What opportunities do you have for teaching medical students?

In the 2022-2023 academic year, our institution hosted a total of 496 medical student rotations. Third- and fourth-year medical students participate on the inpatient wards rotation regularly. We are a primary clerkship site for the University of California, Riverside School of Medicine. For the 2023-24 academic year, we began hosting medical students from other medical schools throughout the country.

Our residents also have opportunities to lecture and teach medical students on campus through our academic partnership with UC Riverside.

Can you describe your affiliation with UC Riverside School of Medicine? 

Our attendings are all clinical faculty of UCR-SOM, and the hospital serves as a primary clerkship site for medical students.

What support does your program provide to pursue scholarly activity? 

Our residents have access to the research division at HCA, allowing for large, retrospective database analysis. Others have taken part in quality improvement projects, research utilizing our cardiac catheterization lab outcomes data, prospective studies in medical education, and prospective pharmaceutical trials. In the 2022-23 academic year, we presented 10 posters at national conferences and published 6 articles to the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Cancers, Circulation, American Journal of Gastroenterology, and Cureus.  

Our residents have presented research and quality improvement projects at national conferences including American College of Physicians (ACP), Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM), American College of Cardiology (ACC), American Heart Association (AHA), Digestive Disease Week (DDW), American College of Gastroenterology (ACG), CHEST, European Annual Congress of Rheumatology (EULAR), IDWeek, ENDO, and National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN). The majority of our interns have presented case reports at regional conferences for ACP and Society for General Internal Medicine (SGIM). Our residents receive travel and conference reimbursement on an annual basis.  

In what ways do you promote resident wellness? 

In patient care, we work to promote strong working relationships with nursing, pharmacy, case management, environmental services, and nutrition services so that our residents can focus their energy on acute patient management. Resident input to program policies has a large impact on wellness. For that reason, we have class representatives to collect and share feedback to program leadership.  

In addition, our residents serve on program-specific and GME-wide wellness and advisory committees to advocate for resident needs. The program strives to promote resident community—it supports 2-3 events annually, as well as class retreats. Our residents have recently held retreats at Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm, Newport Beach, go-kart courses, and mini-golf.  

Are meals provided? 

GME at RCH maintains a fully-stocked resident kitchen, filled with coffee, sandwiches, yogurts, parfaits, salads, candy, chips, soda, water, and more. Residents also receive a stipend for use in the hospital cafeteria, covering two meals daily.  

Also, check out our RCH Eats story on Instagram (login required) for a sample menu! #nofilter

Is parking free? 

Yes! And the lot is less than 100 feet from our building. 

Have other questions or comments?