From the Director

Welcome to UCSF. It is an incredible place. If you are looking for an internal medicine residency program with a strong commitment to clinical excellence, education, scholarly activity, and deeply held values of public service then UCSF is the right place for you! 

Our residents rotate equally through UCSF Health, Zuckerburg San Francisco General, and the San Francisco V.A. hospitals. This three-hospital system provides exposure to diverse patient populations and care delivery systems, leading to an incredibly rich clinical training experience. Our residents are not only phenomenal clinicians, they are also down-to-earth, humble, and willing to say “I don’t know”. This creates a wonderful learning culture where dedicated individuals collaborate to take great care of patients and grow together.

Beyond top-tier clinical training, the program has a long history of our graduates’ becoming leaders in virtually every area of internal medicine. We offer multiple clinical and academic pathways to help residents develop their careers. Residents can choose categorical, physician-scientist or primary care tracks, depending on their career goals. Residents in all tracks can participate in one of our seven different pathways where they can grow with like-minded colleagues, engage in mentored scholarship, and develop skills for their future careers. Whether your interests are in molecular medicine, clinical research, health equity, medical education, global health, clinical informatics or health leadership, our program has a place for you.

If you want to be inspired about what makes UCSF tick, check out the  Core Mission statement developed by our residents. The core values of promoting justice & diversity, supporting individuals, learning purposefully, honoring humility and growing together resonate deeply with all of us at UCSF.

I am proud of the many ways we have adapted our program to meet the needs of our residents. Whether that’s our new Firm system where every resident has a go-to APD to help build a smaller mentorship community within our larger program or adding a 5th day off for each 28-day inpatient rotation, we are constantly working to find ways to help support our residents. Please also see our DEI and Residency Well-being work for more examples of what makes UCSF special.

Our residency leadership team is constantly working to improve our residency, to keep UCSF at the forefront of medical education. Just this year, we rolled out innovative changes on both the inpatient and ambulatory side to help our residents gain more individualized clinical exposure. Second year residents can opt into our proceduralist thread to gain extra exposure to cardiology and intensive care while others can opt for our general categorical thread.

Recognizing that much of medicine is practiced in the outpatient setting, our unique longitudinal ambulatory clinical curriculum allows residents to learn longitudinal care across multiple blocks. We teach ambulatory medicine through multiple longitudinal subspecialty clinics that span several rotations. Since so much of internal medicine practice is in the ambulatory setting, this allows residents to learn about the pace of outpatient workups across a wide range of specialties.

Residency is a time to deepen your understanding of clinical medicine, to explore new career interests and to determine how one personally wants to improve the world of healthcare and beyond. We cannot think of a better place to launch your career than UCSF. We hope you will come and join us here in beautiful San Francisco!

Best,

Rebecca Berman, MD

Internal Medicine Residency Program Director

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Fireside Chat

Watch Rebecca's fireside chat with our chair, Bob Wachter. View all other fireside chats.