We are thrilled you have taken the time to learn more about us and are considering becoming a part of our residency family!

The major focus of our residency program is to train future physicians to become outstanding internists.  We believe in providing a strong foundation in Internal Medicine on which you can continue to build your future career path.  We practice compassionate, high quality care for our patients and the community.  The saying “surviving is important, but thriving is elegant” resonates deeply with us.  We strongly believe in the importance of creating, encouraging, and maintaining a strong sense of community within the program and beyond OHSU.  When you feel connected to your community, you are able to provide superior care, learn with enthusiasm, and become successful in your role as a physician, teacher, leader, advocate, mentor, and friend.

Because we appreciate and have gratitude for our patients as our teachers, we encourage and foster intellectual curiosity every day in order to provide the best care to our patients.  We push you to focus on your education, to question dogma, the barrier to free thinking and to embody empathy and live compassion every day.  Our program believes strongly in the pursuit of scholarship, because we know that the spirit of inquiry will promote life-long learning.  Finally, and even more importantly, we are a program that cares deeply about the life experiences of our patients and understands that the social determinants of health impact every aspect of their lives.  In order for us to be the healers we are supposed to be, we must meet and understand patients where they are and join them in the journey of finding their best health.

We also wanted to let you know that we will be holding our interview season virtually for the 2022-2023 season. While we acknowledge there is some loss in face to face connection with our community and with you to us, we strongly believe that what we gain in terms of equity and impact on climate change supersedes the decision to be face to face. We care deeply about your journey as a medical student and in the ways that we intersect with that journey. Traveling for interviews is a timely and expensive endeavor and does not promote equity for students in the ways our program believes it should. In addition, we passionately feel that there is a moral imperative for us as physicians to address climate change as it will have a substantial impact on the social determinants of health for all of our patients. If we want to remain true to our mission of caring for our patients and understanding their journey in health, we must do those things within our reach to have an impact. It is because of these factors that we are committed to remaining virtual for all future interview seasons in order to create a more equitable, financially-secure, and climate-sustainable approach to the interview seasons. We hope this will not deter you from seeing who we are and what we believe in. We will continue to share who we are through our website, social media sites (Twitter and Instagram), and multiple in-house created videos. 

We hope you find the website informational as you discover more of what we offer and what we hope you can accomplish with us as you continue your journey to becoming the best physician you can be.  We truly look forward to the opportunity to meet you and to help you discover how you can become a part of our residency family.

Sincerely,

Sima S. Desai MD, MACP
Program Director, IM Residency
Vice Chair of Education
Professor of Medicine

Vision

To develop physician leaders who heal through high-quality care, compassion, community engagement and discovery.

Mission

To provide a diverse and individualized training environment that encourages evidence-based medicine, rigorous inquiry, team-based interdisciplinary collaboration and resident wellness to ultimately provide exceptional patient care.

Give to the OHSU Internal Medicine Residency Program

The OHSU Internal Medicine Residency Program strengthens housestaff excellence by encouraging involvement in scholarly activities, professional organizations, research and more. 

Gifts to the Thomas G. Cooney MD Endowed Fund for Excellence in Resident Education helps to support these activities. 

Recent examples of support include:

• Travel and housing costs for both primary care and global health rotations
• Subsidy for residents toward ACP membership
• Support of wellness-related activities
• Expenses related to evening curricular events for residents (e.g., Journal Club)

Our residents thank you for your past and future support.