title: Developing educators, investigators, and leaders during internal medicine residency: the area of distinction program.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Professional organizations have called for individualized training approaches, as well as for opportunities for resident scholarship, to ensure that internal medicine residents have sufficient knowledge and experience to make informed career choices.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To address these training issues within the University of California, San Francisco, internal medicine program, we created the Areas of Distinction (AoD) program to supplement regular clinical duties with specialized curricula designed to engage residents in clinical research, global health, health equities, medical education, molecular medicine, or physician leadership. We describe our AoD program and present this initiative's evaluation data.  METHODS AND PROGRAM EVALUATION: We evaluated features of our AoD program, including program enrollment, resident satisfaction, recruitment surveys, quantity of scholarly products, and the results of our resident's certifying examination scores. Finally, we described the costs of implementing and maintaining the AoDs.
  
  
  RESULTS
  AoD enrollment increased from 81% to 98% during the past 5 years. Both quantitative and qualitative data demonstrated a positive effect on recruitment and improved resident satisfaction with the program, and the number and breadth of scholarly presentations have increased without an adverse effect on our board certification pass rate.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The AoD system led to favorable outcomes in the domains of resident recruitment, satisfaction, scholarship, and board performance. Our intervention showed that residents can successfully obtain clinical training while engaging in specialized education beyond the bounds of core medicine training. Nurturing these interests 5 empower residents to better shape their careers by providing earlier insight into internist roles that transcend classic internal medicine training.
authors.forename: R Jeffrey
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Kohlwes
authors.forename: Patricia
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Cornett
authors.forename: Madhavi
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Dandu
authors.forename: Katherine
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Julian
authors.forename: Arpana
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Vidyarthi
authors.forename: Tracy
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Minichiello
authors.forename: Rebecca
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Shunk
authors.forename: Sharad
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Jain
authors.forename: Elizabeth
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Harleman
authors.forename: Sumant
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ranji
authors.forename: Brad
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Sharpe
authors.forename: Patricia
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: O'Sullivan
authors.forename: Harry
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Hollander