Survey of medicine/pediatrics residency training programs

The American Board of Internal Medicine and the American Board of Pediatrics agreed in 1967 to create combined medicine/pediatrics residency training programs. These programs span four years and provide 24 months of training in each discipline, leading to Board eligibility in both. Little is known about their curricula because there is no separate residency review committee to critique the current programs. The directors of the 65 current programs were surveyed by mail. Fifty-seven (88%) responded to questions about: lengths of time programs had been in operation, attitudes toward quality of residents, program structures and curricula, and performances of graduates taking the Boards. More than half of the programs were established after 1980. Forty of the programs' graduates have passed the Medicine Boards, and 48 have passed the Pediatrics written Boards. Most programs were structured to have residents switch specialties every six months. Program Directors, both in Medicine and in Pediatrics, rated the quality of combined program residents the same as or slightly better than that of residents in non-combined programs. Medicine/pediatrics residencies have become a successful and important source of training for generalists' careers in and outside of academe, and in both primary and specialty care.