When you hope to become a hospitalist and you find that fully half of all Stanford residents in internal medicine will be joining you in that career choice, you tend to want some help along the way. And so Stanford Hospitalist Advanced Practice & Education (SHAPE), which will begin in July 2015, was born.

In a recent brief interview, second-year residents Andrea Smeraglio, MD, and Andre Kumar, MD, talked about the nascent SHAPE program and what it hopes to do for future hospitalists among the Department of Medicine’s residents.

“SHAPE is a new training program within the internal medicine residency,” explained Kumar. “It is designed for residents who want to pursue a career as an academic hospitalist.”

Smeraglio explained further: “SHAPE has three areas of focus: clinical excellence, academic advancement, and mentorship.”

The clinical component utilizes residents’ exposure to very ill patients to broaden clinical training for the budding hospitalists, including extra time in the intensive care unit, on surgical co-management, and on medicine consults. They will also take a course on bedside ultrasound, a useful technology that hospitalists can expect to employ frequently and ought to learn to do well. The academic component has SHAPE participants attending a noontime lecture series on such pertinent topics as cost containment, billing, quality improvement, and research. The participants will also attend a medical teaching workshop led by Kelley Skeff, MD, PhD (professor, general medical disciplines). Mentorship is the third component, seeking to guide SHAPE residents through residency training in areas such as research and quality improvement activities, CV building and, finally, job appli­cation.

There are several requirements for those who choose SHAPE: they must do research and present their work at an academic conference; they must complete a catalog of unique electives designed to optimally prepare them for their future career, although they will still have time to rotate through subspecialties. SHAPE participants will also be paired with a group of medical students and mentor them through a series of longitudinal patient encounters.

“SHAPE is open to any internal medicine resident who wants to enroll,” explains Smeraglio. “We anticipate having five residents per year, and they may join in any year, although, for purposes of being mentored, earlier is better.”  Kumar adds: “We are hoping to train the best and we have set the bar high.”

In response to a question about why the SHAPE program has come into existence now, Kumar explained that hospitalist medicine is “one the fastest growing fields in the country, and we want to give the next generation of hospitalists the best possible training.”

Realizing that they will want to measure the success of SHAPE, they surveyed current internal medicine residents to ask how they feel about, among other things, academia, mentoring, research, and co-managing patients with surgeons. They plan to follow up in a year with those who finished SHAPE to see what differences the program has made. They will also assess the several competencies among SHAPE vs. non-SHAPE residents who may still pursue hospitalist careers.. They plan on publishing their findings over the next several years as the program continues to grow.

“This is really an exciting time for hospitalists,” explained Smeraglio. “The career, the training, and the opportunities are exponentially expanding. We want Stanford to be on the cutting edge of that growth and with SHAPE I believe we will.”

Smeraglio and Kumar will both be graduating in 2016 and plan on pursuing careers as hospitalists. Kumar will be a chief resident in 2016/2017. Those interested in additional information about SHAPE may contact Smeraglio, Kumar, or Associate Residency Program Director Neera Ahuja, MD (clinical associate professor, general medical disciplines).