Welcome to the Combined Internal Medicine-Emergency Medicine
Residency Training Program

Richmond VAMC

VCU Medical Center, in partnership with the Richmond VAMC will offer a combined five-year Internal Medicine-Emergency Medicine training for two residents per year, starting July, 2011. This will be the 12th such program in the country.

Our program grew out of the realization that there is going to be an ever increasing need for dual trained physicians in the changing landscape of modern healthcare. Graduates of a combined program have traditionally accepted academic positions and a growing number are now able to utilize both aspects of their training. An example would be management of Emergency Department Observation Units that are seen as a way to mitigate long wait times and ED overcrowding. Other career options available include research, subspecialty training in Internal Medicine or Emergency Medicine, residency directors and departmental chairs.

The training will be spread between the VCU Medical Center and the Richmond McGuire VA Medical Center. Both sites benefit from excellent full time teaching faculty and offer unique patient care settings. The department of Emergency Medicine has several EM/IM and EM/IM/Critical care faculty who will provide outstanding mentorship to the program residents.

Early in the first year of training, residents will be able to pick a specific “track” they may be interested in (Pediatric EM, Toxicology, Hospital Medicine, etc.) and will be assigned a mentor for that track who will help pick subsequent electives and shape resident's career. The program director will be Pawan Suri, MD who completed a dual residency at the Henry Ford Hospital in 1999. He serves as Chair, Division of Observation Medicine and continues to practice as a teaching attending on the Internal Medicine Wards and practices in the Emergency Department.