What Sets Us Apart
We believe the Mount Carmel Internal Medicine Residency Program is special, as we should. We’ve designed it to be. But we think you’ll find it special, too. From practical and progressive initiatives that will teach you to treat the whole patient to resident-championed ideas, community integration programs and extraordinary experiences that will make you a more well-rounded person and a more satisfied physician, this is a program unlike any other.
Mount Carmel is proud to be the first Internal Medicine residency program in the country to implement the original “Culinary Medicine” curriculum designed by the Tulane Center for Culinary Medicine. Our residents use 6 weeks of protected academic time to complete 6 specific modules of nutritional education courses designed around the Mediterranean Diet.
During the week of Culinary Medicine, a family style lunch is prepared from scratch and shared by all residents.
The true purpose of the Culinary Medicine curriculum is to arm our physicians with the practical nutritional knowledge patients need to prevent and improve their chronic disease states. Incidentally, the classes are also a great source of stress relief and improved wellbeing, and put a spotlight on residents’ own nutrition.
We enroll our patients from our outpatient clinic to provide additional resources for those struggling with managing their diseases.
There are also ongoing research projects including Cook with a Doc and past projects involving biomarker changes in our patients (P.R.O.D.U.C.E.- Patients Redirecting Outcomes of Disease Utilizing Culinary Education).
The Resident Garden was created with a grant from the Mount Carmel Foundation with the support of several administrative leaders to promote innovative ideas focused on preventive health and wellness. It is located at the Grove City location near the employee entrance for all to see. It has six raised beds with vertical posts to allow for a large growing space. It is a cool place to hang out after a day’s work to unwind and during breaks to catch up with friends and colleagues over a coffee talk!
The garden has been a witness to many hours of learning and laughing while also producing bushels of healthy organic produce for our patients.
The produce raised in the garden is given away at our outpatient clinic twice a week. Residents are encouraged to offer the free produce to each patient they see in the clinic. It dramatically increases patient buy-in when they see their doctor cares enough about their health to grow fresh vegetables for them. And those are the kinds of committed, empathetic doctors we try to train through the Mount Carmel Internal Medicine Residency Program.
GME sponsors a Resident Well-Being Program to foster positive resident professional growth and development.
With busy schedules, stress and other pressures, the physician training process can sometimes lead to burnout. At Mount Carmel we do our best to prevent that by giving our residents lots of ways to relax, connect, blow off steam and reengage.
We start with a designated “Wellness” committee, selected by your peers. The committee plans regular activities to build the resident family. The committee is always open to input on new ideas and activities.
The Well-Being Program includes:
- Personal wellness day in addition to regular PTO.
- Good doctoring requires a healthy state of mind. Our health insurance covers up to 6 free individual counseling sessions. If you need someone to talk to, there’s always someone available.
- Our program also provides free priority parking and a food stipend that covers coffee and food while you’re working. Trust us, this makes a huge difference on a busy day!
- Protected time for wellness activities: yoga classes, family gatherings, hikes.
- Faculty sponsored social events throughout the year.
Our residency is blessed with a regularly scheduled bi-annual, 2-week rotation in Northern Uganda. Traditionally, all trip-related expenses have been covered by generous donations from the Mount Carmel Foundation. One of our critical care attendings, Dr. Ralston, has been leading this trip for almost a decade.
We have previously had other outreach trips in the past to places like Guatemala, depending on resident and faculty interests. Our residency is always looking for new opportunities and new adventures across the globe.
Discussions are currently on-going for other International Missions outreach projects within Internal Medicine.
