What is a typical day like?
Residents rotate through subspecialty areas on one academic campus that includes Rhode Island Hospital (RIH), Hasbro Children’s Hospital (HCH) and Women and Infants Hospital (WIH). This minimizes travel and allows all residents to come together for lunch and conference, helping to create a cohesive and close-knit residency.
Rotations in Musculoskeletal imaging, Nuclear Medicine, Body Imaging, Neuro Imaging, Abdominal Imaging, Interventional Radiology, and Chest Radiology are all located at RIH. The Pediatric Radiology rotation is at HCH, which is part of the RIH campus. Breast Imaging rotations are at both RIH and WIH, and the OB/Gyn Imaging rotation is at WIH, which is connected to RIH by an underground tunnel. The Fluoroscopy rotation is at RIH except for 2 weeks in the first year when time is spent at The Miriam Hospital, also in Providence, 4 miles from the RIH campus.
Most sections begin work at 8 am. During the academic year (September to May), there are a variety of required and optional educational conferences that occur once or twice a week from 7 to 8 am. On service, residents provide consultation with clinical colleagues and review cases before going over them in person with an attending. On many different rotations, residents learn to perform procedures under supervision. At noon, residents head off to conference where they eat lunch while participating in an attending lead conference. After a short break after conference, clinical work resumes and the day usually ends at 5pm or shortly thereafter. Our work days are very busy but efficient, allowing residents to see and do a lot while still maintaining work-life balance.
What are the educational resources and conferences?
Residents have access to numerous on-line self-study materials such as StatDX, RadPrimer and Clinical Key and e-anatomy. In addition, for those who prefer hard copy reading, the department maintains a collection of textbooks. Each resident is also provided a book fund that can be used for educational materials or courses.
An hour long noon conference for all residents is given from 12 to 1 pm. Resident conference curriculum is on a two year cycle covering all subspecialty areas of radiology. Radiology physics is also covered in the noon conference curriculum. Non interpretive subjects such as critical thinking skills and business practice are also included. There are additional conferences specific to each residency class given at various times during the year. For instance, the first year residents receive specific introductory conferences at 1pm in July, August and September.
Grand Rounds is held once a month during the academic year. A visiting professor speaks to the entire department at noon time and also gives a separate educational conference to the residents in the morning or afternoon. In addition to Grand Rounds, there are several department wide conferences held each month, including QA and peer review conferences and conferences with didactic components for the entire department. Subspecialty Interesting case conferences are held weekly covering body, emergency, neuro, VIR, MSK and women’s imaging.
Residents participate in interdepartmental conferences such as tumor board, developing required skills of teaching and working in teams. Through active participation in multidisciplinary and departmental conferences, residents will learn how to be a valuable member of the larger health care team in providing appropriate, cost‐effective patient care.
Residents have ample opportunity to teach Brown medical students both on service and in formal instruction. Interested residents have the opportunity to provide prepared lectures to medical students and to first year residents.
What about other educational and moonlighting opportunities?
AIRP: During the second or third year of training, the Department will pay tuition and a housing stipend for residents to attend the AIRP course in Washington, D.C. If a resident chooses not to attend the AIRP, an alternate elective in radiologic‐pathologic correlation will be provided at RIH.
Elective time: Fourth year residents are given at least 12 weeks of elective time available to focus on one or more subspecialty areas or other interests such as research.
Moonlighting: There are multiple opportunities for moonlighting for those who are interested. These are completely voluntary and not all residents choose to participate.
What are the call responsibilities?
Starting in October, first year residents rotate in emergency radiology with direct attending supervision from 5:30 to 10 pm on weekdays and from 8 am to 5 pm on weekends.
Second, third, and fourth year residents participate in a night float system. “Night float short” hours are from 5 pm to 2 am and “night float long” hours are from 10 pm to 8 am. An attending radiologist is present in the ER until 12am and returns at 6am for morning readout of overnight cases. There is attending coverage of the ER from 12am-6am via home PACS workstations.
Second, third, and fourth years take weekend call in body imaging (mostly second and third years) and neuro imaging (mostly third and fourth years). Body call is from 8am–5pm and includes interpretation of inpatient and outpatient body imaging as well as any emergency CT, US, and Fluoroscopy procedures that arise. Neuro call is 8am‐5pm on Saturday and 8am‐3pm on Sunday, and includes inpatient and outpatient neurologic MR imaging.
What do residents do after Brown?
More than 98 percent of Brown residents go on to complete a fellowship. Brown residents pursue subspecialty training in top fellowships throughout the country, often in areas they are from or wish to practice in. We are proud that fellowships and practices reach out to us specifically looking to hire our trainees.
Resident Wellness
We value the overall health of our trainees and are committed to supporting each one in the best way possible. We have a Wellness Committee, offer formal instruction on a variety of topics related to Wellness, offer access to the ACR’s Well-Being Program and Rhode Island Hospital’s GME wellness resources. For those residents needing more individualized support, we are committed to rapidly making the appropriate connections with mental health providers.
Our residents also have 5 dedicated wellness days which can be scheduled in half or full day blocks. We hope this helps ensure that routine healthcare needs can be readily addressed. The Graduate Medical Education Office is extremely helpful and keeps a list of readily available primary care providers as well as other resources.