Curriculum
Three years
Interns are hands-on from day one, and responsibility keeps growing from there. By third year, senior residents are supervising interns and leading the Pods. Procedural and clinical excellence are heavily emphasized during training.
PGY1
Foundations
Intern year kicks off with an immersion block: interns are paired up with another intern, get oriented to the department, and have a lighter shift load with ongoing lectures and skills sessions. After that it's broad exposure across the specialties you lean on in the ED: critical care, obstetrics, pediatric emergency medicine, anesthesia and airway. Early ED blocks at both University Campus and Milford Regional start building resuscitation skills right away, with attendings present but residents leading.
PGY2
Volume and range
Heavier ED volume mainly at University Campus, plus a month each at Memorial Campus and back at Milford Regional. Trauma rotations begin this year, alongside EMS ride time, toxicology, and point-of-care ultrasound, and residents start taking shifts as the senior resident on the floor, running the department, triaging sick from not-sick, and directing traffic.
PGY3
Running the department
A supervising resident month, trauma and PICU rotations, elective time toward fellowship or a chosen area of interest, and the rotation residents talk about most: a month at a community site in Hawaii before graduating.
Pediatric EM is longitudinal across all three years. On top of dedicated Peds EM blocks, residents pick up pediatric shifts sprinkled throughout their regular adult ED months, in the region's only dedicated pediatric ED staffed by PEM-trained faculty.
Didactics & conference
Protected conference time every Wednesday.
Weekly conference
Wednesdays, with the conference block itself protected from clinical shifts. Didactic lectures, case-based discussion, and resident presentations.
Simulation
High-fidelity sim sessions for the rare, high-stakes cases: codes, crashing airways, peds resuscitations.
M&M and journal club
Regular morbidity and mortality conference and journal club, run by residents, attended by faculty.
Oral boards & ultrasound
Oral boards practice and hands-on ultrasound workshops built into the conference rotation.
What life outside the hospital looks like
Worcester, housing, and the social side of a small class.