Frequently Asked Questions
General
Q: Do you have an Electronic Medical Record (EMR)?
A: Yes. Temple uses the Epic EMR in all facilities. There is a web-based portal for secure remote access.
Q: How do your residents do in obtaining fellowships?
A: Extremely well. In the past decade, our residents have consistently matched into extremely competitive fellowships, with greater than 95% getting one of their top choices. You can see where our residents have matched here.
Q: What percentage of your graduates pursue primary care?
A: Each class’s percentage is a little different. For the past several years, about a third of our graduates have gone into general internal medicine with some entering outpatient primary care practices and the remainder becoming hospitalists or going onto another generalist career such as palliative medicine, geriatrics or general internal medicine fellowships. As a result, our graduates’ post-residency plans are quite diverse when compared with many other large urban residency programs. Please see our post-residency plans page for an overview of where our graduates go each year.
Q: Does Temple have non-resident covered services?
A: We do. With our ever-quickening work pace and proud position as one of Pennsylvania’s busiest safety-net hospitals we have expanded our direct care services, which are staffed by hospitalists, without raising teaching service caps. At Temple, the majority of ward attendings are full-time faculty in the Section of Hospital Medicine and spend their time alternating between teaching and direct care (non-resident) services. The overnight hospitalist admits to direct care services overnight and enhances the 24-hour admitting support for our residents. We also have internal moonlighting opportunities for upper-year residents to assist with admissions to direct care services at times of peak volume.
Q: Where do residents live?
A: Our residents live in many different neighborhoods throughout the city and the nearby suburbs, with Center City (downtown) being the most popular. Despite bustling businesses and easy access to public transportation, Downtown Philadelphia is not the only option. Many residents also live in Fishtown & Northern Liberties, Fairmount & Spring Garden, and South Philadelphia, all which have their own unique vibes with popular restaurants. We also have residents who live in areas of Philadelphia outside the hustle and bustle of downtown such as Manayunk, Mt. Airy, and Germantown which give a more suburban-like feel. The New Jersey and Pennsylvania suburbs are other great options and are easily accessible by car – and residents can enjoy free parking at the hospital if they choose to drive!
Compared to other major metropolitan areas on the east coast (such as Boston, New York, or Washington, D.C), Philadelphia has a lower cost of living and offers more affordable housing, which allows residents to enjoy the perks of living downtown. If you are new to the area, this website may be helpful.
Q: Is safety a concern around Temple Hospital?
A: Like any large city, Philadelphia has its share of safety concerns. Temple Police are very visible in and around the Temple Health Science Campus. As a result, safety in areas around TUH is excellent. All walkways to the parking garages and subways are well-lit and patrolled. Our advice to anyone, in any city, is to use common sense and your best judgment. If you are leaving at any time on your own and prefer extra security, the Temple Police are on campus and available for escort at all hours. Finally, there are over 500 residents and fellows across all of Temple’s training programs that choose to train at Temple each year, in addition to hundreds of faculty and staff. We all feel safety is important, and we feel safe and secure coming to work each day by car, bike, or subway.
Q: How many PGY-1 positions are available?
A: There are 61 total PGY-1 positions, including opportunities for linked and unlinked preliminary residents.
Q: What is the salary?
A: Next year’s salary has not been announced. For information on this year's salary, please visit the House Staff Stipends page.
Q: How many clinical training sites are there?
A: At Temple, we are proud that our residents are all scheduled for most of their time at Temple University Hospital (TUH). However, our inpatient Bone Marrow Transplant service is located at Temple University-Jeanes Hospital and Fox Chase Cancer Center and is a required rotation, which is easily accessible by both car and public transit. Though this is the only required rotation outside of TUH-Main Campus, there are opportunities to work at other Temple Health facilities. For example, our Primary Care Track residents have the opportunity to pursue longitudinal experiences at sites such as the Philadelphia Health District, long-term care facilities, the Mazzoni Center, and Esperanza Health Center. Many of our subspecialists also host off-campus clinics where they welcome interested residents as well. Additionally, international experiences are offered through the global health elective.
Q: How much time do I spend at each site as a PGY-1?
A: As an intern, you will spend all of your time at Temple University Hospital, unless you choose to do an elective rotation at an affiliate site.
Q: When are my days off?
A: All residents on admitting services get a minimum of 4 days off per month. We stagger days off on floor service teams over Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. During ambulatory weeks, there is no evening or weekend call. This means that categorical residents are guaranteed every 7th and 8th weekend off without clinical responsibilities.
Q: What is a typical day on ward service like as an intern?
The schedule is designed to maximize both educational experience and wellness. As such, interns are on the floors from 7-5:30 on all days except Mondays and afternoon admit days (which are 7-7). There is protected time for conferences. In-depth review of the call cycle will be discussed during the interview day.
Q: Do you have any overnight call?
A: We do not have overnight call in the traditional sense of 24-hour inpatient coverage. Instead, our residents staff nights in a night-float format. Night float is split into admitting teams (two, resident-intern pairs), and cross coverage teams (two, resident-intern pairs) who are paired for 1-2 weeks at a time.
Q: How much autonomy is given to residents to make clinical decisions?
A: Quite a bit. The importance of resident autonomy is often cited as one of the most valued aspects of this program. Sometimes the word “autonomy” can be taken as a euphemism for being left alone. We provide autonomy for interns and residents to make medical decisions and foster clinical reasoning skills, with appropriate supervision.
Temple residents gain more autonomy as they advance through the program. Interns always have backup from in-house upper-year residents. As a third-year, residents take on sub-interns (fourth year medical students) and act as the junior attending on the general medicine team. Our third-years also serve as code (cardiac arrest) and rapid response team leaders. Attendings still make it a priority to be present and available to their teams at all times for questions or guidance, in person and by phone. Additionally, there are always hospitalists present on direct care overnight, as well as in-house cardiology and pulmonary fellows, and an intensivist for added layers of support when needed.
Q: What are the ancillary services like at Temple University Hospital?
A: The ancillary services are robust and allow residents to focus on patient care without having to spend valuable time doing less medically oriented tasks. There are phlebotomy services, transport personnel, case management and social work, community health workers and pharmacists. Pharmacists help with prior authorizations, medication review and reconciliation and medication teaching. In the clinic, pharmacists also help co-manage hypertension and diabetes. Community Health Care Workers help patients navigate the health system and help address some social determinants of health.
Q: How many people are on a wards team?
A: A typical general medicine team is made up of one attending, one resident, two interns, and two 3rd year medical students. Each team has a hard patient cap of 16 patients.
Q: What types of patients do you see at Temple?
A: The patient mix at Temple is one of the strongest aspects of our training program. As a quaternary referral center in an urban environment, Temple sees a diverse patient population, including many underserved patients. This includes patients who live in the surrounding neighborhood adjacent to the hospital and patients who are transferred from regional community hospitals or from other hospitals across the country.
Q: Is food provided at work?
A: The Graduate Medical Education office generously provides residents with money on their employee ID card to use in the cafeteria. This money varies based on the rotations you work. Lunch is also provided at the noon conferences and during academic half days.
Q: Is there an educational stipend?
A: Yes. We understand how important conference travel can be to our residents’ education, and work to support residents in their endeavors to present their work at meetings, both locally and nationally. Each resident gets a $1,500 educational stipend to use during their second or third year. This funding can be distributed over two separate disbursements. It includes travel, conference registration fees, hotel and meal expenses, and board review courses.
Research
Q: What are the opportunities for research?
A: Research opportunities for residents are abundant at Temple. Our program brings together a robust research infrastructure with faculty who are approachable and eager to bring residents onto their teams. Residents can find research projects within the Department of Medicine or do work with one of the medical school’s several research institutes. Research opportunities run the spectrum from bench and translational research to clinical investigation, to medical education. Many residents have successfully published and presented their work in the past year. Residents are encouraged to attend local, regional, and national conferences to present, and as part of the resident benefits package. Please refer to the research portion of our website for more information.
Q: Is there a research requirement?
A: There is no specific research requirement in residency. However, all residents must engage in scholarly activity, which is broadly defined. Most of our residents actively engage in research. All residents complete a QI project in the PGY-2 year. There are a number of opportunities to present their work, including a yearly department-wide symposium. Other opportunities for resident presentations include: Morbidity and Mortality conference series, journal club, and resident-led didactics. All of these experiences provide residents with the critical thinking and presentation skills which can be valuable to their future careers.
Q: Are there research electives?
A: Yes. Residents have the opportunity to do up to 4 weeks of research electives per year and can be taken in a full block or can be split up.
Q: How can I get involved in research?
A: The opportunities to get involved in a research project begin early on during our residents’ training. While rotating on subspecialty services, residents work closely with subspecialty attendings and fellows which allows our residents to see a variety of unique cases and build relationships with subspecialty attendings who are often leading a variety of projects. Our Section of Hospital Medicine is also active in writing case reports, manuscripts, quality improvement research, and medical education research and residents start building relationships with our Hospital Medicine attendings from day one. In general, everyone at Temple is quite friendly and if you are interested in research opportunities in a particular area, residents can reach out to their chief residents who can help connect them with faculty members who share a similar area of interest.
Intensive Care Units
Q: What is the ICU experience like?
A: Our medical-respiratory ICU is staffed by attendings from the Department of Thoracic Medicine and Surgery (DTMS). In addition to providing care for medical ICU patients, Temple is consistently one of the highest-volume lung transplant centers in the nation, giving residents exposure to patients with varying pulmonary pathologies, pre- and post- lung transplant care. Residents are given great latitude to manage critical care patients, including placement of central venous catheters and arterial lines, ventilator management, performing other procedures, management of veno-venous extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (VV-EMCO) patients, and conducting family meetings.
The cardiac intensive care unit is staffed by physicians from the Section of Cardiology and provides care to patients pre- and post- percutaneous intervention and patients with a variety of life-threatening cardiac disorders including severe pulmonary hypertension and right ventricular failure, heart transplant complications, myocardial infarctions resulting in hemodynamic instability, malignant arrhythmias, and cardiogenic shock requiring advanced mechanical support devices—RVAD, LVAD, Impella, Tandem Heart, Intraortic Balloon Pumps, and VA-ECMO.