Department of Emergency Medicine

Our Distinctive Multi-Site Training Model

Our program spans four central regional hospital emergency departments across the Chicago metro area, with a total patient volume of over 200K patient visits per year.  Training sites encompass diverse patient populations in the nation’s urban, suburban, academic, and community settings. Core training sites include the University of Illinois/UI Health, Little Company of Mary Medical Center, Illinois Masonic Medical Center, and Lutheran General Hospital. This configuration broadens the range of patient demographics our residents engage with and introduces them to various institutional cultures and medical practices. We have found that this strengthens their adaptability and cultural competence to confidently practice emergency medicine in any environment.  Although we have four training sites, we share one purpose:  to prepare you for success.  Our leadership teams from all sites meet regularly to focus on resident education and coordination of training.  All sites have core missions that embrace excellence in life-saving care and closing gaps in health and care for all patients.  This common purpose fosters an environment dedicated to clinical excellence and innovative medical practices that address disparities in healthcare delivery.

An Unparalleled Interdisciplinary Training Environment

The University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) is unique in that it encompasses seven different health sciences schools within blocks of each other near downtown Chicago—medicine, nursing, pharmacy, dentistry, public health, social work, and allied health sciences. Our College of Medicine is among the most diverse; over 25% of its students come from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds.

Our flagship hospital, UI Health, partners closely with Mile Square Health Center, a large Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) with several clinics across the Chicago region. This FQHC primarily serves high-risk, vulnerable communities in Chicago and nearby areas. It is one of the largest FQHCs affiliated with an academic medical center. It focuses on providing comprehensive, cost-effective, and compassionate care to underserved populations, regardless of their ability to pay.

This environment of diverse learners and health disciplines offers a unique perspective on how emergency medicine can partner in new and innovative ways with the health system and its surrounding community to improve health outcomes. Given the leadership roles that emergency medicine physicians increasingly play within health systems, our training environment can provide residents with an expanded perspective on healthcare leadership.

A Diverse and Accomplished Faculty

Our core faculty team consists of 24 diverse, full-time, board-certified members who excel in emergency medicine. Their innovative work, supported by extramural grant funding, has placed us in the top 20 programs nationwide over the past several years. This ranking is a testament to their groundbreaking ideas and contributions.

Our program benefits from the diverse perspectives and mentorship of faculty members from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds in medicine (URiM) and the LGBTQ community. These faculty members are recognized nationally and globally within Emergency Medicine, and many hold significant leadership roles within our health sciences schools and health system.

We are all part of the largest university in the Chicago region so we can partner with faculty from many departments with additional expertise relevant to your training.  Our department works closely with the Department of Medical Education and the 28,000-square-foot state-of-the-art Simulation and Integration Learning (SAIL) center to provide a collaborative and interdisciplinary environment for education and training.

Leaders in Proactive Emergency Medicine

Training you to provide life-saving emergency care is our highest priority. We also recognize the significant value of viewing Emergency Medicine as a window into our health system and community—understanding what works and what could work better. This perspective allows us to proactively prevent harm from future emergencies through preventive emergency medicine.

We also leverage this viewpoint to identify and address social determinants of health within our communities, a practice we term social emergency medicine. Innovations developed from this unique perspective can save lives well beyond the walls of our Emergency Departments.

As our health systems strive to provide value-based care, this approach offers tremendous opportunities for our patients and your healthcare leadership.

Our Program is Altogether Extraordinary

Investing in your future is our highest priority. We bring together a remarkable diversity of teachers, colleagues, and training opportunities to develop highly accomplished physicians prepared from day one to provide life-saving care. Our close-knit community is dedicated to mentorship and lifelong learning, fostering successful and sustainable careers.

As we continue to shape the future of emergency medicine both in the United States and globally, we invite you to explore this remarkable opportunity to build your career foundation with us.

We Have Always Been a Program That Utilizes Multiple Sites For Training

We began as a three-hospital group and are now a four-hospital consortium comprised of The University of Illinois Hospital (UIC), Advocate Illinois Masonic, Advocate Lutheran General, and Little Company of Mary. This is a distinctive model for training EM residents, which has tremendous benefits. Each hospital has a unique patient population ranging from Tertiary care to enormous health disparities, from urban multicultural to large community/suburban. These different patient populations provide a foundation of experience that allows residents to choose the population they wish to serve for their careers. We believe this enriched variety of patients is as important in a resident’s development as anything learned on a blog or podcast. In addition to the variety of patient populations offered by the multisite system, the number of faculty and mentors available to residents is also significantly increased. While we have a formal mentorship program, the one-on-one time spent with an attending on shift often has some of the highest impact on resident learning and experience. Graduates routinely mention the multisite system as the “best preparation for that first job that anyone could have.”

Health Equity has been a Cornerstone

of our residency program and integral to our university mission for decades. The research division of our department concentrates on projects that aim to improve population health and raise the bar for emergency care. Much of this work is done outside of the walls of the ED, in the community where our patients live. Some of these projects are described below. We have developed a fellowship program in Health Equity that was born out of a health equity track within the residency program. Many of our residents and graduates have worked on the projects listed below. As the momentum for health equity has grown, so has the number of faculty members in our department concentrating on improving community health. Equity is not just about our patients; it also involves the physicians we recruit. We have one of the nation’s most diverse faculties; our residency classes also mirror this diversity.

Emergency Medicine is a Rapidly Evolving Field

UIC emergency medicine is at the forefront of training and innovation and truly enjoys leading the educational advances that will continue to make medical school graduates outstanding emergency physicians.