The Inova Department of Medicine offers a wide range of core and subspecialty conferences, and recruits distinguished speakers from both the hospital medical staff and the local community of private physicians.

In addition to the daily noon lecture series, several conferences have been designed to enhance the learner's experience.

  • Resident Case Report: Supervised by the chief medical residents. Cases from the medicine teaching service are presented by residents. Program director, attending faculty and subspecialists are in attendance. These cases are used to highlight development of critical thinking skills. We encourage the audience to develop a broad differential diagnosis and teach the immediate management of the primary diagnosis.
  • Journal Club: Supervised by the chief medical residents with assistance from core faculty, program director, EBM champions from the Dept of Medicine and in collaboration with the George Mason College of Health and Human Services. The article chosen is based on a clinical question from the resident's ward experience at IFMC, and then reviewed using the McMaster criteria. Occurs once a month. A designated faculty expert, staff epidemiologist, and a reference librarian are also present.
  • Simulation Modules: These sessions occur on a monthly basis and are held in the Inova Center for Advanced Medical Simulation (ICAMS) and focus on central line placement, airway management, Point of Care Ultrasound (POCUS), hemodynamics and lumbar puncture. We also provide hands-on experience in the simulation lab to review and practice advanced cardiac life support (ACLS) measures with residents. Sessions are supervised by chief residents, critical care, emergency medicine and general medicine faculty.
  • Medicine Pathology Radiology Conference: Occurs once a month. Presented by upper level residents with the program director, associate program director and teaching faculty in attendance. One representative physician from pathology and radiology are present. Pertinent subspecialists as related to the case are invited and participate in the discussion. A case from the medicine teaching service is reviewed, followed by pertinent radiology and microscopic pathology. Subspecialists assist with questions related to specialty specific management.
  • Administrative Chief Report: Run by chief residents monthly. Residents review duty hours, patient care pitfalls or system problems encountered during patient care, and transitions of care. Focus is on finding solutions, self-reflection, and quality improvement ideas and is non-punitive in nature. Forum is open only to resident members. Suggestions and ideas from the session are discussed with the program director and academic committee by chief residents.
  • Attending Lecture Series: Internists and sub-specialists provide interactive case based lectures on core topics in medicine. This series includes all internal medicine sub-specialty topics as well as ethics, global health, health information technology and palliative care.
  • Internal Medicine Grand Rounds: Hospital-wide lecture on an internal medicine topic, usually describing new therapies or paradigms, given by local or national experts. Occurs once a week on Tuesdays.
  • Educational Grand Rounds: Hospital-wide lecture given once a month on topics applicable to all medical residents, across all residency programs, and all teaching faculty. Attendance is required of both faculty and residents. Examples include fatigue/sleep deprivation, effective teaching, cultural competence, and documentation.
  • Patient Safety Conference (formerly M and M): Occurs on a monthly basis, presented by a third year medicine resident. Program director, associate program director, hospitalists, and critical care and subspecialists are present and also encouraged to attend. A case which presents opportunities for practice based learning and system based improvement is reviewed. Residents and teaching faculty interact to determine what the salient learning points would be for similar cases in the future. Pathology and autopsy information is reviewed when possible. Representatives from other departments such as pathology, surgery, radiology are also in attendance when applicable to the case.
  • Didactic/Teaching Attending Rounds: Occurs daily by the designated teaching faculty for the team. Will be in addition to patient management rounds and may include bedside teaching, lectures, or detailed discussions about specific patients on the service. Teaching attendings and teams may also utilize this time to perform mini-CEX, multidisciplinary rounds, perform discharge appointments, use ‘teachback’, give feedback, and review documentation and residents’ teaching abilities.
  • Cost-Conscious Curriculum: Occurs throughout the conference curriculum and in dedicated sessions that are moderated by the chief residents, program director and physician advisor for case management. It is modeled after the American College of Physicians cost-conscious curriculum. Applicable charges, finances related to active cases are discussed and utility of diagnostic testing and cost of care are reviewed.
  • Point-of-Care Ultrasound (POCUS) Series: Occurs at least once per month with didactics focused on the basics of ultrasound properties, image acquisition and image review. These are accompanied by small group scanning sessions. Sessions are facilitated by chief residents, and critical and general medicine faculty who are facile with POCUS technology. These sessions are in addition to dedicated POCUS time provided to all PGY-1s.