Contact information

Stephanie Hutchison, DO
hutchisons@mlhs.org

Expectations

Welcome to your fourth-year medicine sub-internship at Lankenau Medical Center. Our goal is to provide you with as close to a real “intern” experience as possible, so you develop the clinical skills and confidence to become an outstanding house officer. Your duties will include but are not limited to:

  • Performing full detailed histories and physical exams
  • Developing assessments, differential diagnoses, and treatment plans
  • Daily detailed progress notes
  • Attending various medical lectures and conferences
  • Presenting on daily rounds to your attending and residents
  • Carry four to five patients at one time
  • Enter orders for your patients
  • Discuss and present your patient to consultants

The most important thing is that you know your patients extremely well and provide excellent patient care. You will also learn the organizational skills that it takes to be a strong resident next year. You should actively read about your patients’ disease processes and always ask questions when you are not sure of something.

Team set-up

Our system here at Lankenau Medical Center consists of eight geographically based medical services. You will each be assigned to a floor-based team consisting of one resident, one intern, and one third year medical student. You will have one attending on your service that is responsible for your teaching and evaluations; they are the “team leaders”. Each team may have patients who are assigned to private attendings, thus the “team leader” attending is not responsible for their care. You occasionally may have a patient of a private attending, especially if it is a good learning case. While it is important to recognize you are part of a team you will be working mostly with your intern. They should be supervising your work and helping you place any orders that you write.

Daily schedule and call

You will be expected to arrive to Lankenau between 6:30–6:45 am to start your day. Upon arrival you will go to your assigned conference room to pick up your sign out from the night float intern as well as any new admissions from the night float resident.

You should round on your patients and write your progress notes between generally 7:00–9:00 am. Bedside teaching rounds will generally begin around 9:00am. Each team will have case management rounds beginning around 11:00 am.

There will be daily Noon conference taking place between 12:00–1:00 pm in the Annenberg building. You should be excused from rounds to attend these as well as all other teaching conferences. During the afternoon you will be responsible for following up on studies and consults your patient may have had, as well as new admissions which may come in after 12:00 pm. On regular days you will be available to take admissions until 3:30 pm.

You will take “long call” every fourth day along with your intern and admit new patients until 7:00 pm. You are expected to take call on one Saturday and one Sunday during your rotation, again following the call schedule of your intern. You do not have to come in on your post-call day on the weekends. You must sign out your patients every day to either the on-call intern (during regular days) or the night float intern (during long call days).

Conferences and rounds

(The format will be announced as this is subject to change due to the current state of the pandemic.)

Grand Rounds
Grand rounds are held at 8:00 am every Friday morning.

Fourth year report
This year you will have bi-weekly small group lectures and case presentations. These sessions will be held at 1:00 pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays. You will be randomly scheduled to present a patient you have encountered at one of the conferences for a case-based discussion. You will be notified in advance of your scheduled day.

Evaluations

You will be evaluated during this rotation by your team attending and intern. You will be provided with an evaluation form which you should hand to each person prior to completion of your rotation. You should be receiving feedback throughout your rotation, and more specifically should ask for a mid-rotation feedback session with your evaluators.

How to apply for internal medicine clerkships and electives

If you are interested in being assigned to a medicine floor team, please contact Kathryn Lattanzio at lattanziok@mlhs.org with your requests including block dates you are available to participate.

To schedule an elective:

You must be a fourth-year student to participate in our electives due to the complexity of the rotation. Please send us more than one elective choice in your order of preference and more than one block of dates to work with. Please send this information to Kathryn Lattanzio at lattanziok@mlhs.org.