Emergency Medicine Residency Program

The primary objective of our program is to develop physicians who administer exceptional clinical and social emergency care to as broad a population as possible. We develop this goal by having our residents rotate at four distinctive sites that make up our four-hospital consortium; University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System (UI Health), which provides one-third of all trauma care in the county and has been the site of many significant scientific contributions to clinical medicine and surgery, Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center, an integrated trauma site which is also the city’s flagship hospital for mental health with an entire wing in their ER devoted to mental health, OSF Little Company of Mary Medical Center, a high acuity hospital and one of only a handful of centers in the nation to offer a state-of-the-art imaging system that combines two types of imaging technology, and Advocate Lutheran General Hospital, a level 1 pediatric trauma center.

Our residency program emphasizes community, mentorship and leadership.

We prioritize community and relationship building, therefore, mentorship and advocacy begin in the interview process and continue throughout residency. We deliver a wellness-inspired education series, weekly protected didactics time, and protection from clinical duties. We sponsor dinners, retreats, outings, and celebrations. We recognize the emotional challenges inherent to completing a residency program and proactively attend to our resident’s emotional and mental well-being.

A BrownCoat through the eyes of a resident.

“A brown coat is not an article of clothing; it represents membership in a warm, welcoming family and portrays someone who trains hard to heal others, who has my back and whose back I’ve got. A BrownCoat is kindness, grit, smarts, jokes, passion, friendship, inclusiveness, and forgiveness. A BrownCoat is a family.”

-Adrian Romero, BrownCoat.

First seen on the floors of our earliest participating rotation sites, Illinois Masonic, Lutheran General, and Mercy, our emergency medicine residents, in contrast to their resident colleagues and specialists administering care in the hospital, wore brown instead of white lab coats. In this way, they could be easily distinguished as EM resident physicians. Over time, the symbolism of a “brown coat” came to represent the excellence of the emergency medicine residents who donned them. They became a signature emblem of our residency program, and thus “BrownCoat Nation” was born. The Brown Coat dates back to 1981 and defines our residents;  the symbol is historic in our residency program.

Link to BrownCoat Nation, the Education Blog of the UIC EM and EM/IM Residency Programs.

For questions about the program or the application process, please reach out to our Director of Educational Programs, Karolina Marczewski, MS Marczew2@uic.edu