Our residents are very fortunate to participate in a month-long Med-Peds hospitalist rotation at nearbyGreer Memorial Hospital. Greer Memorial is a community hospital within Prisma Health that is staffed by Med-Peds trained physicians. While on this service, residents will see firsthand what a career in hospital medicine for Med-Peds physicians involves. Residents provide comprehensive inpatient care including procedures for an 11 bed intensive care unit (ICU), progressive ICU, medicine-surgical floor, pediatrics unit and our level 2 newborn nursery.

We have created a Med-Peds Ambulatory Rotation for our PGY-1 residents that gives them the opportunity to meet and work with Med-Peds practitioners in a variety of settings in the Greenville community. The goals of this rotation are to enable our residents to experience the care of adults and children together in a variety of acute, primary and specialty care settings to learn about effective transition of care from pediatric to adult settings and to meet potential mentors and role models in Med-Peds.

This rotation incorporates experiences with Med-Peds faculty at four different Med-Peds practices in our community, urgent care with our MD360 program, as well as subspecialty Med-Peds experiences. In addition, month long electives at any of these practices are available for our upper-level residents interested in primary care Med-Peds.

For applicants interested in caring for Spanish speaking and underserved populations, both the internal medicine and pediatrics ambulatory resident practices serve the health care needs of medically complex patient populations with limited access to care. Both clinics are staffed with a variety of social work, nutrition and case management services to help our patients to get the assistance and support they need. Our pediatric ambulatory resident clinic at the Center for Pediatric Medicine is the largest Medicaid practice in the state of South Carolina.

• 34% of our pediatric patients are Hispanic and 25% are Spanish-speaking
• Three on-site interpreters
• Ready access to remote interpreters, if needed.
• Residents who speak Spanish can also take a medical Spanish exam in order to interpret independently.
• Residents may also spend additional time with the Greenville Free Medical Clinic, or with the New Horizon FQHC on an elective basis.

Prisma Health is extremely supportive of global health experiences. Residents from all programs have traveled the world to provide health care to some of the world’s neediest patients. Many of our Med-Peds residents are interested in global health and have initiated travel to Brazil, Guatemala, Haiti, Kenya and many other locations. Our program and hospital system support and encourage interested residents to pursue international health opportunities. Many of our residents have participated in month-long international health trips in both the PGY-3 and PGY-4 years.

Our program is passionate about improving the care of those with chronic medical illness and transitional Care. Dr. Sarah Hinton is director of the Prisma Health Pediatric to Adult Transitions Committee which is developing a system to facilitate the safe, timely and effective transition of adolescent patients from pediatric to adult care settings across our health system.

In the Spring 2015, we also hosted a successful regional transitional conference, “Ready, Set, Transition – Bridging Pediatric to Adult Care in Chronic Medical Illness” sponsored by the National Med-Peds Residency Association, South Carolina Developmental Disabilities Council, Carolina Center for Counseling and Behavioral Interventions, South Carolina Solutions and South Carolina Health Connections. Dr. Manisha Patel, the leader of the Children’s Hospital Adult Congenital Heart Disease clinical program at Prisma Health, is also a champion for transitional care. Many residents are involved in quality improvement projects that involve transitions of care in a variety of clinical settings.

Our program has a dedicated Med-Peds chief resident position concurrent with the fourth year of training to help with the administrative and scheduling issues particular to Med-Peds. The Med-Peds chief resident works closely with the program director and program coordinator to ensure that the change days, clinics and conferences are well coordinated between the programs.

In addition, the chief resident helps to generate the most useful topics for the Med-Peds noon conferences and workshops. We announce our chief resident selection one year in advance to allow the chief elect to learn the position and participate in leadership opportunities when available. Our Chief-Elect has taken an active role during the PGY-3 year in helping with conference planning, assisting with interview season and updating our Med-Peds Handbook and online survival guides for our various clinical rotations. The book is in its 13th edition now and is available in PDF form.

We are very fortunate to have Kelli DaSilva as a program coordinator who is dedicated only to the administration of the Med-Peds program. Many programs have shared coordinators between the medicine and pediatrics programs. A dedicated Med-Peds coordinator ensures that our residents know exactly what their Med-Peds administrative requirements are and how best to accomplish them. In addition, our coordinator tracks and files all evaluations, conferences, procedures and curricular materials specific to our Med-Peds program.

Our Med-Peds residency has a weekly Med-Peds noon conference series that covers a wide variety of topics not found elsewhere in the medicine or pediatric curricula. Our Med-Peds noon conferences and journal clubs give our residents and faculty the opportunity to review medical topics specific to Med-Peds physicians, such as transitional care, pediatric and adolescent hypertension, or late effects of childhood cancer treatment. We have also incorporated a wellness/mindfulness workshop series.

We also have twice yearly Med-Peds workshops that are attended by members of our Med-Peds faculty. Coverage is provided for all of our residents to attend the Med-Peds workshops. These workshops give our residents an opportunities to discuss career planning or other unique Med-Peds topics with a variety of Med-Peds trained practitioners. Follow this link for more information on our conferences.

Approximately one-quarter of our program graduates have gone on to fellowship training after Med-Peds residency and residents from both categorical programs have secured competitive fellowship positions across the country. Residents interested in fellowship receive comprehensive mentorship from the program director, specialty faculty and department chairs. For residents interested in gaining additional research skills during residency, Clemson University’s Departments of Public Health Sciences and Mathematical Sciences, in collaboration GHS,  is now offering a graduate-level Certificate in Clinical and Translational Research. The goal of this program is to enhance clinical and translational research capabilities of clinicians, research support

The goal of this program is to enhance clinical and translational research capabilities of clinicians, research support staff and other health professionals. The program will be delivered via evening classes at University Center Greenville (UCG) in South Carolina and are free of charge to the resident. Additionally, all of our residents complete quality improvement or research projects during residency, with results presented at regional meetings.

Our Med-Peds program is the beneficiary of a variety of information technologies. Our residents all receive free iPhones with unlimited data plans for work and personal use on day one of their internship. All important residency documents are shared via a shared Dropbox folder as well. This affords the residents the ability to stay connected with patient care, each other and program leadership wherever they might be in the hospital system and take advantage of a variety of medical apps. In addition, each resident is given use of a tablet PC for four years for use with our outpatient electronic medical record system, EPIC.  

At the University of South Carolina School of Medicine at Greenville, the Greenville Health Care Simulation Center is among the most sophisticated simulation-based learning and research centers in the United States, with “11,500 square feet of purpose-built space equipped with the latest simulation, multi-media and information technology.” There are 11 training rooms with audio-visual recording capabilities and adult, child and infant simulators. The Med-Peds residents utilize the center frequently during Internal Medicine and Pediatric procedure workshops, Internal Medicine and Pediatric code strategies sessions practicing ACLS/BLS, PALS and NRP skills and Internal Medicine OSCE examinations.

Each of our Med-Peds residents are required to make a case presentation at the South Carolina American College of Physicians (internal medicine) meeting in the third year of residency. Winners of the regional ACP presentation competition will present at the National ACP meeting as well. In addition, our residents are also asked to complete quality improvement projects for pediatrics during their four years that will be presented to the South Carolina American Academy of Pediatrics meeting in July or August of the senior year.

Our residents have many excellent opportunities for additional paid clinical experiences at the North Greenville Long-Term Acute Care Hospital (LTACH), Greenville Detention Center and in the GHS Newborn Nursery (weekend coverage). At the LTACH, residents take care of patients who require an extended hospital stay for various conditions, such as post-stroke care, ventilator management, wound care and long term antibiotics.

At the Greenville County Detention Center, residents and nurses manage the chronic medical conditions and some acute problems of detention center inmates. Security is present during clinical encounters. PGY2-PGY4 residents in good standing can begin moonlighting during the second year after an application, completion of their Adult Critical Care rotation and obtaining their South Carolina medical license. Moonlighting hours count toward duty hours and these moonlighting privileges are a granted at the discretion of the program director according to overall clinical performance and standing within the program.

In addition to all of the tremendous resources available at the hospital for our Med-Peds residents, we are very fortunate to be a part of a growing, vibrant community. Greenville, SC has consistently been rated one of the fastest growing and most desirable places to live in America. Greenville has a beautifully renovated downtown with a magnificent waterfall and park, a variety of restaurants, as well as theater and the arts. From Greenville, it is a short drive to the beach in Charleston, or to the mountains in Asheville, NC. Greenville is also roughly halfway between Charlotte, NC and Atlanta, GA. Almost everyone who comes to Upstate South Carolina is impressed by what they see here. We would love for you to visit us.