Benefits of teaching hospital care

At any given time, there may be several hundred residents doing their training at HCMC.  HCMC’s residency programs train doctors who go on to practice at hospitals and clinics throughout Minnesota. As a teaching hospital, patients are under the continuous care of medical professors and residents, which gives patients a unique advantage.

“At a teaching hospital, you’re going to find young doctors who are pushing and curious and wanting to get more information,” explains Dr. Anne Pereira, Internal Medicine Residency Program Director at HCMC. “That keeps the more senior physicians up-to-date in terms of the knowledge they have, and you have a lot of doctors and doctors in training that are talking about you and thinking carefully about your care.”

HCMC was the first teaching hospital in Minnesota, and continues to serve as a major teaching hospital for resident physicians, medical students, nurses, and other members of the health care team.

“Residents come to us after having completed 4 years of medical school,” says Dr. Pereira. “They’re doctors — they get their medical degree upon graduation — and then depending on the specialty they choose, they have anywhere from 3-5 or 6-7 years of training. They get additional training under supervising physicians, and that’s what we call a ‘residency.'”

Dr. Nate Scott is a 4th year resident in HCMC’s combined Emergency Medicine/Internal Medicine program.

“I was interested in a couple of different things in medical school, and wanted the chance to practice in both specialties when I finished. I was looking around and saw that the program at HCMC was fantastic in that regard, and it would really give me the opportunity to work in the ER and as a general internist some day, which is what I plan to do.”

Find out more about medical education on the latest Healthy Matters podcast.

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