Three-hospitals: giving residents experience caring for patients in different health systems
Neurology residents at UCSF will rotate through three very different hospitals. Moffitt-Long Hospital at UCSF Health is a tertiary/quaternary care facility that draws patients from the San Francisco Bay area, Northern California, and across the nation. Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital (ZSFG) serves uninsured and underinsured patients in San Francisco and is the city's only Level I trauma center. The Veterans Administration Medical Center (VAMC) serves predominantly war veterans including a growing number of Iraq/Afghanistan veterans and is a national referral center for movement disorders and an Epilepsy Center of Excellence site. For child neurology experiences, residents rotate through Benioff Children’s Hospital, also a part of UCSF Health, and the flagship hospital for our child neurology residency program. Residents also rotate through outpatient clinics at UCSF's Weill Institute for Neurosciences at Mission Bay, which houses the Multiple Sclerosis, Memory and Aging, Movement Disorders, Neurorecovery, and Complex Diagnosis Clinics.
Clinic weeks: allowing residents to focus on inpatients on inpatient rotations, and outpatients during clinic weeks
Every resident has a clinic week block every 6 weeks during which continuity clinics, outpatient block didactics and subspecialty clinics occur. This allows junior residents to begin experiencing subspecialty neurology clinics at the outset of their year. Continuity clinics take place at all three hospitals, allowing residents to learn how to care for outpatients in diverse health care systems. Clinic weeks also include a half-day longitudinal selective, which recurs every 6 weeks, giving each resident the opportunity to work with a neurology faculty member 8 times over the course of the year. Selective and subspecialty clinics include spine, neuromuscular, neurovascular, movement disorders, headache, dementia, neuro-recovery, rehab, sleep, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, neuro-ophthalmology and neuro-oncology.
Other outpatient rotations outside of clinic weeks include clinic rotations at the VAMC focused on epilepsy, movement disorders and telehealth, and neuromuscular disorders; psychiatry and behavioral neurology; and an outpatient rotation at ZSFG with a special curriculum focused on caring for underserved patients.
Child neurology
Adult neurology residents spend one month each year on the child neurology service. During the R2 year experience, residents learn the fundamentals of child neurology on the pediatric neurohospitalist service. In the R3 year, residents rotate through the pediatric epilepsy service, and in the R4 year, through two weeks of subspecialty clinics and two weeks of neurology consultation in the neonatal intensive care nursery. Teaching conferences including Journal Club, Pediatric Neuroradiology, and Pediatric Neurology Clinic Conference, are held weekly.
Flexible residency: providing the opportunity to launch an academic career
Many residents choose to enter our flexible residency program in which they spend 6 months in the R4 year learning to perform clinical or laboratory research, or develop skills with a focus on public health, global health, or becoming a master clinician or clinician-educator. Residents also have the option of up to 5 additional elective months in lieu of flexible residency.
