Conferences

Educational Opportunities

Below are brief descriptions of the daily educational opportunities that have been built into the residency. This collection of case presentations, conferences and lectures work in conjunction to augment the learning that occurs organically through patient care. While this list is relatively comprehensive it is certainly not exhaustive. Residents can always avail themselves of the multiple educational opportunities within Harvard, Boston University and the city of Boston itself.

Medical Grand Rounds

Weekly Grand Rounds at both institutions provide exposure to leading clinicians and researchers providing cutting-edge information about their areas of expertise. Grand Rounds features topics from multiple areas of medicine including clinical topics, basic science research, global health, and public policy.

Noon Conference

Based on feedback from residents, daily conference has been consolidated into a one-hour, fully protected Noon Conference. The sessions are given by a combination of residents, chief residents, fellows known for their excellent teaching skills and expert faculty. The weekly rotation includes a variety of educational formats including TEACH resident case presentations, core didactic lectures, chief rounds, and hands-on/skill sessions. A fantastic free lunch is provided daily. Boards prep questions are often incorporated into noon conference teaching in order to show how cases are linked to boards preparation.

PHM Chat

This is a very popular conference one morning a week. All of the pediatric hospital medicine teams as well as selected faculty gather to discuss an active case on the wards. An intern presents the case and leads a discussion on differential diagnosis, work-up, and management, with an emphasis on unsolved case elements for the group to help guide next steps. Given the success of PHM chat, we are piloting a sister conference, Wards Chat, at BMC this upcoming year.

 

Subspecialty Conferences

While on certain rotations – pulmonary, GI, cardiology, oncology, ICP, and MSICU – residents attend daily morning lectures organized by that department. These sessions are led by the subspecialty fellows or faculty and cover a range of topics within that subspecialty.

Case of the Week

This beloved weekly presentation at Boston Medical Center is organized and moderated by the senior residents. The resident selects a case that they have seen at BMC at some point during their time in residency and develops learning objectives based on that case. They then invite subspecialty faculty members to serve as “consultants” on the case and answer specific questions in order to enhance the audiences understanding of the case. All residents rotating at BMC, as well as the pediatric faculty, attend the presentation.

 

Grand Rounds/Health Equity Rounds

Health Equity Rounds (HER) is a longitudinal, case-based conference series and curriculum that replaces both BCH and BMC Grand Rounds at least quarterly. HER was built on the belief that medical education has the power to improve health equity through addressing the impact of structural racism and implicit bias on patient care. Based in the Department of Pediatrics at Boston Medical Center, the HER curriculum has been disseminated to Children’s National, Duke, Massachusetts General Hospital for Children and Boston Children’s Hospital and continues to grow by the year .