The Department of Medicine of Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine is strongly committed to excellence in clinical education. Our goal is to provide the best training program in the country. This goal is achieved by providing diverse inpatient and outpatient experiences under the supervision of dedicated and highly-skilled clinician-educators who are deeply committed to teaching.
Our philosophy is that the best residency training occurs when professional responsibility and autonomy increase commensurate with demonstrated competence within a supportive environment.
Over the last few years, we have redesigned most elements of our program to meet the needs of physicians entering medicine in the current era. Our new inpatient service provides a team-oriented approach to patient care with extensive bedside teaching coupled to a scholarly didactic curriculum.
Patients are triaged to our teaching service to ensure that residents and students are involved in the care of individuals with the full range of diagnoses seen by internists. Our outpatient program provides continuity experiences with outstanding role models. State of the art information technology exists throughout our outpatient and inpatient system, foreshadowing the medical environment of the future. Elective experiences provide opportunities for research and in-depth exposure to medical specialties. The department is proud of its faculty members’ contributions to basic science and clinical research, and residents are encouraged to undertake research projects during residency. Career guidance and mentoring begins from the outset of training, as we recognize how soon residents face the next phase of decision-making.
Our program is based at two hospitals of the McGaw Medical Center of Northwestern University (Northwestern Memorial Hospital [NMH] — a state-of-the-art facility which opened in May 1999 — and VA Chicago Health Care System). The department faculty consists of 900 members. Faculty admit patients to the Northwestern teaching service or to the Hospitalist service, depending on the nature of clinical issues. Exposure to faculty occurs in multiple settings including: inpatient attendings, specialty rotations, outpatient clinics, morning report, noontime and other conferences, and numerous social venues. The Northwestern residency program provides an excellent mix of patients seen in a large academic teaching hospital and a Veteran’s hospital, combined with extensive ambulatory clinics. I welcome your interest in our program and encourage you to consider Northwestern during your search for postgraduate education in internal medicine. Cordially,
Douglas E. Vaughan, MD
Chairman, Department of Medicine
About the Chairman
Douglas E. Vaughan MD is the Irving Cutter Professor and Chairman of the Department of Medicine at Northwestern. He has been the Department Chairman since June 2008. Dr Vaughan is an accomplished physician-scientist. His laboratory studies the fibrinolytic system at the molecular and cellular level. Murine models are used to characterize the tissue specific expression of PAI-1 in response to pathophysiologic stimuli. Hypothesis driven clinical studies are also performed to confirm basic findings and to establish physiological relevance in vivo.
Dr. Vaughan has received many awards and honors and is a fellow in the American College of Cardiology. He has been elected to membership in the organizations that recognize leading physician-scientists, including the American Society of Clinical Investigation (ASCI), and the Association of American Physicians (AAP). He has co-authored more than 150 journal articles and serves on the editorial boards of Circulation, Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology, and Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostasis.
