Graduate Medical Education
The Transitional Year Residency Program at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center at El Paso is a fully accredited, one-year program.
Texas Tech firmly supports the concept of transitional programs, since medical graduates can benefit from the additional broad-based clinical experience prior to choosing a career specialty. The TY resident has opportunities to rotate through various clinical specialties basic to medicine, work with subspecialists on all rotations and develop career plans that are well suited to the needs of the resident undecided in a career specialty choice.
For prospective residents who require a preliminary year of residency training as a prerequisite for PGY II residency entry, the program offers a well-rounded year of clinical and didactic medical education on all rotations. Upon completion of the program, the transitional residency graduate will be well prepared in ambulatory, inpatient, and intensive care in several specialty areas to enter further specialty training in virtually any field.
Transitional residents are given primary patient care responsibility on all rotations. Under supervision, they are responsible for total care of both ward, intensive care and ambulatory patients, including the writing of orders, development of diagnostic plans, development of therapeutic programs, progress notes, and discharge summaries--all the responsibilities equivalent to categorical PGY-1 residents in each department. The transitional residents are expected to attend and participate in departmental rounds and teaching conferences on all services where they rotate at any given time.
On call responsibility is generally every fourth night on all teaching services; it occurs with less frequency on subspecialty, elective, and ambulatory rotations.
In general, there is appropriate balance between didactic education and clinical service on all rotations. However, the educational development of transitional residents tends to take priority over the service needs of the clinics and hospital.
Features of the Transitional Program include an extensive diversity of clinical pathology in patients who come to TTUHSC-EP for primary, specialty, and emergency care. This diversity offers the transitional resident an exceptionally broad exposure to presentations of common and uncommon diseases.
Direct and primary clinical responsibility on all services allows the resident the opportunity to rapidly develop both clinical skills and confidence in patient care responsibility. The balance between didactic education and clinical responsibility is a positive feature of the program. Residents treat a high volume of critical care patients on most services created through the presence of a Level 1 trauma service, internal medicine referrals, maternal-fetal service, level III nursery, and the psychiatric facility for El Paso County. The Emergency Medicine Program, an organized teaching service with an established residency offers EMS direction and trauma center activities which further enhance experiential opportunities for the resident.
The opportunity for procedural experience on all clinical rotations for transitional residents is generous, including uncomplicated deliveries, minor gynecological procedures, newborn intubations, lumbar punctures, and intravenous lines, adult central line placement, swan ganz placement, thoracentesis and paracentesis, endotracheal intubations, tube thoracoscopy, and peritoneal lavage, and reduction of uncomplicated fractures and dislocations.
Since the patient population at TTUSHC-El Paso is 80 to 90 percent Hispanic, an understanding of medical Spanish is desirable, although not required, for the transitional resident to perform successfully. The majority of patients are bilingual and most of the clinical and hospital staff can provide translation assistance.