Categorical Track

As part of the Categorical Track at Virginia Mason, each resident will participate in inpatient, outpatient and elective experiences that will teach the skills and knowledge needed to pursue any path in internal medicine, whether it be fellowship, hospital medicine or primary care. As compared to the primary care track, categorical residents will spend more months on inpatient services (see the sample schedule for more details).

Every categorical and primary care resident has a primary care continuity clinic throughout all three years of residency, either at a Virginia Mason clinic or at the Eastgate Public Health Center. In addition to the inpatient medicine services and continuity clinic, there are opportunities to participate in a variety of electives, both outpatient and inpatient based. Overall, our goal is to provide residents with a wealth of varied experiences that are customizable, so that each resident has the opportunity to focus on a particular path within internal medicine. As an example, a resident intent on hospital medicine might decide to pursue inpatient-based electives such as inpatient neurology, where the resident works one-on-one with a neurohospitalist.

The details about sample schedules, continuity clinics, and available electives are available in their respective sections. Please reference these sections for more detailed descriptions of what Virginia Mason has to offer. Below is a bit more about what makes the Virginia Mason inpatient experience so unique.

Each available elective usually has a predominant outpatient or inpatient focus. However, each elective can be molded based on your interest to have more outpatient or inpatient experience based on your interests and future career goals.

The rotations with inpatient predominant experiences are:

• Float Hospitalist
• Infectious Diseases
• Inpatient Glycemic Control-Endocrinology
• Inpatient Neurohospitalist
• Inpatient Oncology
• Inpatient Psychiatry
• Nephrology

On each of these rotations, you work one-on-one with an attending, seeing new patient consults and follow-up patients. On the float service, senior residents have the opportunity to work aside an independent hospitalist, managing patients and getting a feel for the life of a hospitalist. The schedule for elective inpatient rotations are typically Monday-Friday, with weekends off!

At Virginia Mason, there are plenty of opportunities to connect with categorical graduates of the program and attending physicians. Every year, we host a variety of career nights including hospital medicine, primary care and fellowship panels. There is a wealth of information that we have gained from our alum, many of whom have stayed at Virginia Mason after residency, or come back post-fellowship!