Curriculum & Conferences

You are required to attend conferences based on the rotations you’re on. These conferences are required when on elective rotations and required medicine rotations. You are also required to attend the monthly Intern Ethics Conference and Patient Safety Conference. Each block has its own Transitional Year Journal Club where a resident presents a journal article of their choice or discusses a medical error in which they were involved.

During your general medicine rotation, you are required to attend the general medicine conferences. During your general surgery rotation, you are required to attend the surgery conferences.

Medicine Conferences

Our wide variety of internal medicine conferences cover inpatient and outpatient medicine, including both rare and common diseases. The recently remodeled Ross Learning Center and Overholt Auditorium on our La Crosse Campus have a complete array of state-of-the-art multimedia tools to enhance presentation and learning.

All house staff are able to attend all conferences unless there is a patient in need of immediate care.

Morning Report
This is a cornerstone of our resident education. It runs from 7:30 to 8 a.m. Monday-Wednesday. Attendance is expected for all internal medicine residents, other residents and students on internal medicine rotations, and selected staff. The chief resident, a senior resident or GM attending physician moderates a case in a highly interactive fashion. Cases range from quintessential internal medicine where the fine points of management are reviewed, to rare cases where complete differential diagnosis, test selection and treatment methods are discussed. Additionally, M&M cases and Grand Rounds are presented by either teaching staff or residents at this time intermixed throughout the academic year. Grand Rounds focuses on an in-depth discussion of disease processes or guideline updates. On Thursdays at this time, Core Curriculum occurs. All teaching is accomplished with an emphasis on evidence-based and cost-effective medicine principles.

Board Review Class
On Fridays from 7:30 to 8 a.m., a small group board review class is held using MedStudy and MKSAP as a guide. The IM chief resident leads this class and emphasizes an approach to difficult questions and the "hot points" that will be seen on the ABIM exam.

Intern Ethics Seminar
This is a monthly discussion led by Thomas Harter, Ph.D., Medical Humanities/Ethics, along with various staff. First-year residents meet and discuss ethics in a case-based format. Topics are often driven by current clinical experiences to help residents handle difficult ethical issues that they will face during the remainder of their careers. 

Surgery Conferences

Weekly

• Surgical Residency Core Lecture Series (basic and clinical science)
• Surgery Morbidity/Mortality Conference
• Breast Cancer Conference
• Trauma and Critical Lecture Series

Monthly

• Surgical Skills Lab Training
• Anatomic Dissection Lab - Simulation
• Journal Club

Quarterly

• Medical Ethics Conference
• Palliative Care Conference

Other Conferences
In addition to mandatory medicine and surgery conferences, residents are encouraged to attend the daily conferences at the medical center involving other specialties as their schedules permit.

GELS

Gundersen Expert Lecture Series (GELS) is an educational program based on the needs of our providers to help maintain competence and knowledge about new and developing information that affects their practice.

GELS occurs every Wednesday from 12:10 to 12:50 p.m. in the Overholt Auditorium on the La Crosse Campus. Sessions also are available via live stream.

Numerous other conferences happen throughout the hospital and clinic, covering a variety of medical topics. Residents are always invited and encouraged to attend.

Available conferences include:

Residents must participate in scholarly activity during their Transitional Year Residency. Participation requirements include each resident’s presentation of a case report or a presentation to colleagues on a subject of interest and/or development of a research or quality improvement project. Generally, residents complete this on their own time during their elective months if doing a case report or quality improvement project. There is an option to do a research elective month if interested in doing clinical research. This requires prior approval by the program director. Opportunities for clinical research abound at Gundersen. We have a full research support staff, including biostatisticians and media specialists, who are ready to help you with your research project. Staff physicians are more than willing to form mentoring relationships with you in areas of research as well.