North Alabama Medical Center to Train Future Doctors With Internal Medicine Residency Program

Following a lengthy accreditation process, North Alabama Medical Center (NAMC) is proud to announce that 12 first-year internal medicine residents and 12 second-year internal medicine residents will begin practicing in its newly developed Internal Medicine Residency training program beginning July 1st, 2020.

“For more than three years, the Internal Medicine Residency faculty has worked tirelessly to develop curriculum with an emphasis on academic medicine. The goal of our program is to assist residents in developing the knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary to become outstanding comprehensive internists capable of managing diverse patients with a broad range of diseases, as they specifically apply to the patients in our local community,” said Khushdeep Chahal, M.D., Residency Program Director. “The focus is on training young physicians to provide compassionate care while practicing the most up-to-date evidence based medicine as it is being practiced amongst larger academic medical centers around the country.”

The Internal Medicine program at NAMC is only the third Internal Medicine program accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) in Alabama in the last 42 years. Currently, there are only seven ACGME accredited Internal Medicine residency programs in the state.

The program at North Alabama Medical Center received more than 1,000 applications and extended on-site interviews to 70 potential residents. The residency training will last three years. Graduates who complete the program can pursue careers as hospitalists, primary care physicians or subspecialize.

“We were looking for residents who we thought would be a good fit for our community and the service we plan to provide, which places an emphasis on primary care,” said Chahal. “We also took into consideration the likelihood that our residents would continue practicing in the Shoals following their training, improving the health of our area and contributing to the medical needs of Northwest Alabama as physicians.”

The program will consist of four teaching service teams, including three teams that will care for medical-surgical inpatients and a Critical Care team. In addition to providing inpatient care, there will also be a residency continuity clinic. The goal is to have patients discharged from the residency service to follow up in this outpatient referral facility, thus increasing the availability of primary care physicians and services in the community.

“The continuity clinic comes with many benefits, including being cared for by well-educated residents whose sole purpose is to learn as they train,” said Chahal. “These physicians will be reading the latest updates in medical practices and have a supervisor in the clinic who will see the patients with the residents. The residents will be able to spend more time with patients, which we know will increase patient satisfaction.”

As a teaching hospital, North Alabama Medical Center continues its goal of being a leader in high quality, evidence based care.