Electives

The goal of Mass General’s internal medicine electives is to ensure that each of our diverse residents is able to meet their own educational and professional goals. Residents can use elective time to explore career interests, develop greater skills in a particular clinical area, connect with mentors, or work on projects in research, medical education, advocacy, or community health.

In addition to traditional elective offerings by individual divisions—cardiology, endocrinology, gastroenterology, hematology-oncology, infectious diseases, nephrology, geriatrics/palliative care, and pulmonology, among others—the Internal Medicine Residency Program offers a diverse selection of clinical, community-based, classroom-based, and innovation/leadership electives driven by residents’ interests. If a particular interest is not represented by the available electives, residents have the option of doing a self-design elective.

Examples of some of our additional elective offerings include:

Clinical electives

  • Hospital medicine
  • Inpatient addiction medicine
  • Inpatient procedure service
  • Vascular medicine
  • Women’s health
  • Point-of-care ultrasound

Community-based electives

  • Boston Healthcare for the Homeless
  • Refugee and immigrant health
  • Correctional health
  • Advocacy

Classroom-based electives

  • Resident as teacher
  • Clinical reasoning
  • Applied cardiopulmonary physiology

Innovation and leadership electives

  • Quality and safety
  • Population health management
  • Department of Medicine operations
  • Medical innovation
  • Simulation

Other electives

  • Medical writing
  • Research

Longitudinal subspecialty clinics

Longitudinal clinics are optional clinics that can be arranged for junior residents interested in pursuing fellowship training or exploring an area of interest. These longitudinal clinics are scheduled on ambulatory and elective blocks in addition to regular continuity clinic and provide our residents with the opportunity to work closely with a faculty mentor and follow subspecialty patients longitudinally.