As a resident of our internal medicine program, you will interact with a diverse patient population and learn from our numerous faculty, who encompass the spectrum of subspecialities. One of the best ways to learn about a program is hearing from the people who live and work in it every day.
Three Residents
Learn from our residents about how the training at Wake Forest can be tailored to guide you toward and then help you succeed in the career of your interest.Get to know our...
Gary Rosenthal, MD, FACP
Tinsley R. Harrison Professor and Chair
It is an honor to welcome you to the Department of Internal Medicine at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. The Department, which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, enjoys a rich heritage. Our founding chair, Tinsley Harrison, MD was an icon in American medicine. His prescient vision for excellence in the core missions of academic medicine – teaching, patient care, and research – is deeply woven into the fabric of all that we do and serves as an inspiration for our medical students, residents and fellows.
I am particularly proud of our residency program and clerkships, which emphasizes core clinical problem solving skills and prepare learners for lifetime learning and professional growth. The cornerstone of our educational programs is a commitment to teaching excellence among our faculty, who consistently win institutional and national teaching awards. Our programs provide trainees with exposure to the entire spectrum of subspecialties, while becoming highly competent in the skills and judgment required of the general internist. In many ways, our educational programs are the glue that bind faculty and staff across their diverse professional interests and that creates a strong sense of family.
Our faculty also conduct groundbreaking research to elucidate the mechanisms of disease, to translate these findings to novel treatments, and to develop innovative healthcare delivery models to improve patients’ health and wellbeing. Many of our faculty have led large national trials that have defined our current treatment of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and many types of cancer.
The Department of Internal Medicine at Wake Forest is firmly committed to preparing trainees to thrive in a changing health care landscape and to shaping that landscape in ways that promote patient-centered high value care. Perhaps most importantly, the Department is committed to fostering an academic environment that embraces diversity, eliminates healthcare disparities, and treats patients with the utmost respect and dignity.
I encourage your to explore our website and to know our faculty, trainees, and staff and the resources that are aligned to support each of our missions.
Hal H. Atkinson, MD, MS
Program Director, Internal Medicine Residency
Welcome to the Wake Forest School of Medicine Internal Medicine Residency Program website! Our program is fortunate to be at the heart of a cutting-edge academic medical center known for its focus on high-quality patient care, translational research and educational innovations. We take pride in providing a supportive environment for residents to grow and mature into physicians capable of pursuing any career pathway in internal medicine. Our graduating residents are truly “pluripotent” – capable of serving as outstanding general internists and fully prepared for all types of subspecialty training.
At Wake Forest, we have a long tradition of excellent training in the core clinical skills of internal medicine where history, physical examination and clinical reasoning are taught by some of the best role models and educators in medicine. In addition to fostering a solid foundation in these core skills, we recognize that modern training in internal medicine must prepare residents to be lifelong learners and critical reviewers of an ever-expanding scientific knowledge base, to function productively within healthcare teams and new models of care delivery, and to serve as the next generation of leaders to improve quality of care in medicine. These training priorities have led us to embrace a variety of innovative teaching strategies, including our Learning Health Systems seminars, clinical experiences within a patient-centered medical home and interdisciplinary teams, and faculty-mentored quality improvement projects. Adding to this rich curriculum of experiences, each resident is paired with a faculty mentor to advance personal career goals and interests.
I would like to highlight a few of the outstanding features that make our medical center an ideal training environment. Wake Forest not only provides a significant proportion of primary care for individuals living in the Winston-Salem area, but we also serve as the main tertiary care referral center for western North Carolina and surrounding states in our region. Thus, we have a well-balanced mix of patients and clinical problems in general and subspecialty internal medicine. We also enjoy a rich academic environment with multiple opportunities for research and scholarship in all areas of medicine. Our nationally recognized residency research curriculum promotes scholarship for all residents and provides mentorship through the Tinsley Harrison Research Pathway to those who are considering academic research as a part of their careers. In addition, residents may also take advantage of the Clinical Scholars in Informatics or Medical Education pathways to foster development of other complementary skills. These features are integral reasons that our graduates are highly desirable candidates for clinical practice, academic medicine and subspecialty fellowships.
I am excited about the future of internal medicine, and it gives me great satisfaction to be a part of the training of the next generation of internal medicine physicians. If you are seeking an innovative program focused on your success, I invite you to learn more about the Wake Forest School of Medicine Internal Medicine Residency Program.
Karl Richardson, MD
When I applied to residency, Wake Forest stood out to me for a variety of reasons. I was attracted to the opportunity to train at an academic, tertiary referral center with nationally recognized specialty care, but I also wanted to train somewhere that recognized the importance in producing well-rounded primary care physicians who can operate in community settings as well. In addition, I was looking for a program where I would have the chance to pursue research projects. Three years later, it is clear that I made the right decision. Not only did I receive robust training in internal medicine, but I have developed friendships with residents and faculty that have helped me grow as a physician and as a person. I have also had numerous opportunities to develop projects related to healthcare advocacy and health disparities with departmental support. I am thrilled to be spending another year at Wake Forest as an Assistant Chief of Medicine and to continue working with this amazing group of physicians.
Wake Forest’s Internal Medicine residency program offers a hearty environment for resident education by providing the perfect blend of resident autonomy and faculty support. Wake Forest is a major regional tertiary referral center, setting the stage for a prosperous learning environment, with comprehensive subspecialty presence and a broad range of patient presentations.
Having been a medical student at the Wake Forest School of Medicine I was well-aware of the incredible culture within the Internal Medicine residency program. One of the most important factors that led me to stay here for residency was the people. The departmental and program leadership genuinely cares about the residents and the state of the residency program. The camaraderie that exists amongst the residents across all three years is such that your residency colleagues become like family. When I was evaluating programs it was important to me to find a program where the faculty would be personally invested in my learning and where I would look forward to coming to work alongside resident colleagues who were my friends, and the Wake Forest Internal Medicine residency program fit this description perfectly. Beyond this, the Internal Medicine residency program also offers a diverse training experience that will allow any prospective resident to fulfill their long-term career goals. As evidenced by our perennially strong fellowship match lists and the diversity of inpatient and outpatient general internal medicine positions that our graduates obtain, there truly is something here for everyone.
When I applied to residency, I focused on programs that had an emphasis on primary care. A mentor told me that most IM programs train you to be a good hospitalist, due to the national required rotations, and what sets programs apart are the outpatient experiences. Wake’s primary care track allowed me to grow my clinic skills while still having a rigorous inpatient training. Through this track, I developed relationships with and was educated by outstanding primary care physicians and outpatient specialists. Furthermore, Wake is in an ideal geographic location. Its large catch area of patients from several states allows for diverse patient cases and pathology. My ultimate decision to rank Wake number one came down to the feeling I had on interview day. I was with friends and could imagine myself thriving. The comradery and culture led to the development of lifelong friends. After completing three years of residency, I was prepared to be an excellent primary care internist.