Ohio State University Hospital

The Department of Neurology at the Ohio State University has a long history of a dedicated commitment to education. The missions of the residency are to help residents develop the highest level of clinical and diagnostic skill in neurology, gain exposure to academic research opportunities, engage in teaching opportunities, foster enthusiasm and passion at work, function well in a team environment, and model compassionate patient care, while maintaining resident life balance with a focus on wellness. An ultimate aim is to launch highly successful careers for our trainees and to graduate residents that make a positive impact on patient care and advance the field of neurology.

Our program has state-of-the-art facilities, including a dedicated Brain and Spine Hospital and a vast exposure to subspecialty clinics and procedural studies. Starting in the PGY-2 year, our residents also experience a weekly continuity clinic with patients that are followed for the duration of residency. Continuity Clinic takes place at the Brain and Spine Hospital Neurological Multi-Specialty Care Clinic. This clinic is on the 12th floor of the Brain and Spine Hospital, easily accessible for both the residents and their patients. The continuity clinic allows residents to manage and treat their own patients.

Our program has a full complement of faculty in the broad range of subspecialties, including nationally recognized leaders. Faculty are represented in cognitive, epilepsy, general neurology, headache, movement disorders, neurocritical care, neurohospitalist, neuro-immunology, neuromuscular, neuro-otology, neurovascular, neuro-oncology, pain management, sleep medicine, sports neurology, and clinical neurophysiology with a strong representation of neuroscientists, as well. Both the faculty and our residents are highly engaged in teaching and have received numerous awards recognizing that.

In addition to neurologic subspecialty exposure, our residents also have access to educational opportunities in focused multidisciplinary clinics, such as Neurosarcoidosis clinic, Neuro-Rheumatology clinic, Muscular Dystrophy Association clinic, ALS clinic, myasthenia gravis clinic, epilepsy pregnancy clinic, epilepsy transition clinic (pediatric to adult), non-epileptic event clinic, MS psychotherapy clinic and MS fatigue/sleep clinic, Huntington’s disease clinic, functional movement disorder clinic, and amyloidosis clinic, as examples.

In regards to exposure to scholarship, all of our residents are assigned a faculty mentor and have vast opportunities for meaningful research. We have a research lead that will streamline connecting trainees with scholarly opportunities and coordinating research education on biostatistics and database mining for our trainees. We have an annual neuroscience day for our residents, fellows, and basic science trainees, highlighting the scholarly productivity.

We have a robust educational curriculum for preparing our residents for a career in

neurology:

2 day boot camp for onboarding new residents

1 hour of daily protected time for morning didactics Monday through Friday (grand rounds on Tuesdays at that time).

Grand rounds introduces our trainees to a vast amount of invited thought leaders from other institutions with a national/international impact in their respective fields.

Full course of introductory lectures on neurologic emergencies at the beginning of each academic year.

Introductory neuroanatomy early in the academic year.

All major neurologic subspecialties annually have dedicated time for formal lecture coverage of the subspecialty.

Morning report sessions/case conferences, chair rounds, patient safety sessions, and clinical algorithm sessions, movement disorder conferences, radiology sessions, neurophysiology sessions, neurobehavioral conferences are some additional examples of didactic sessions throughout the year.

Annual board review course provided internally by our program.

Internal board and clinical practice resources, including comprehensive practice test resources.

The program also helps fund adjunctive educational opportunities outside of the program.

Wellness is of utmost importance in our program with a commitment to our residents’ educational experience and culture, while also having an emphasis on the balance between service and education. We utilize resident feedback to optimize the experience in our program, we provide wellness activities, and we closely monitor the well-being of our trainees. Our residents’ teamwork and support of each other is inspiring.

Additional measures to balance service and education:

Our residents rotate through a night float system to cover the call needs of the program. Our residents do not take call in pediatric neurology with those 3 months of the curriculum dedicated to more of a formative learning experience. Our collaborative partner, Nationwide Children’s Hospital, is a top tier pediatric program nationally, providing an excellent educational opportunity. Significant faculty and senior resident

support is provided at the beginning of the PGY2 year to successfully transition residents. This includes a curriculum that starts with a dedicated section on neurologic emergencies and delaying PGY2 exposure to night float until late in the year, allowing for a smooth and comfortable transition into neurology residency.

A note about intern year:

Our PGY1 interns match categorically at the Ohio State University and receive training through an outstanding internal medicine program. Additionally, we maintain connection with our interns by having them rotate in our outpatient neurology clinic during one month of their internship, as well as having them gain exposure to the neurocritical care unit. This helps them to gain comfort in evaluating higher level acuity patients in neurology. Our interns also will be coming to our quarterly wellness retreats to have contact with the neurology program prior to starting their PGY2 year.

Conclusion:

Our goal is to create the best educational experience possible, train the most capable clinician neurologists, and to allow our residents to have the highest of satisfaction throughout this exciting training time. Additionally, our aim is to help facilitate our trainees to realize their vision and goals for their career, related to fellowship opportunities, developing academic careers, or transitioning to successful clinical practice.

We are very happy that many of our residents have stayed on for fellowships here at the Ohio State University. Our residents have had very successful fellowship matches at other strong institutions, as well. Recent examples include Harvard, Stanford, Yale, University of Michigan, Duke, Alabama, Boston University, UC-Davis, UCSD, University of Cincinnati, Case Western, Cornell, and the University of Pennsylvania. We are very proud of our residents, their accomplishments, and the successful careers that they are launching. We enjoy continuing to collaborate with them after they graduate as they make an impact on the field of neurology.