Hello internal medicine colleagues,
We would once again like to update you on the status of medical students that will be rotating through various internal medicine services. As always, thank you for your amazing role in educating the doctors of tomorrow.
- Students are now allowed to work with patients with COVID-19. There was a new policy created by the School of Medicine which can be found here: https://www.med.unc.edu/md/current-students-faculty-and-staff-resources/.
Students now have access to PPE, have the vaccine option (and most are vaccinated), and due to the educational opportunities they now can see COVID-19 patients, if not already doing so. For personal or family reasons, they are allowed to opt out, but we suspect most students will be eager to participate.
- Students still cannot be involved in shadowing, and the restrictions will be lifted as visitation policies are lifted: https://www.uncmedicalcenter.org/uncmc/support/volunteer-services/shadowing/.
- We have had a very successful inaugural year of medical student chiefs, and Dr. Alyssa Tilly deserves credit for spearheading this new endeavor and has done an excellent job. In one year, they have started new case conferences and M&Ms, they have increased contacts from alumni, they submitted an abstract to Alliance for Academic Internal Medicine (AAIM) which was accepted, and improved communication with students interested in internal medicine. Two new chiefs have been chosen for this upcoming year: Rebecca Varnell and Christine Hamilton. Congratulations to them, and importantly to Dr. Tilly for her leadership and direction for this as well as leading the career goal advising for upper-level medical students. She has done an outstanding job.
- Dr. Karen Kimel-Scott is helping medical students interested in internal medicine by overseeing the Internal Medicine Interest Group. If you have ideas for this group, whether recruitment or ways to get more information out, we would love to hear them. You might get an email from Dr. Kimel-Scott to discuss “A Day in the Life Of…” as we try to increase exposure to the students of our diverse group.
- Congratulations to Dr. Deb Bynum, chief residents and colleagues for the extremely successful IM match. Let’s congratulate our UNC SOM medical students on their wonderful match as well.
It has been a unique year with all the changes in rotations and increased workload for many. Thanks for all you do, and thanks for taking the time to educate students. It is noticed.
Ashley Henderson, MD, and Koyal Jain, MD
Co-directors of Undergraduate Education in the Department of Medicine