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Welcome From the Program Leadership

Welcome From the Program Leadership

Thank you for your interest in our program! Our priorities include:

  • Trainee wellness/empathy in medicine
  • Outstanding clinical training
  • Opportunities for research, education, and leadership

Our residents graduate well equipped to pursue primary care in urban or rural settings, subspecialty fellowship, hospitalist medicine, or global health. We strive to educate and support residents who feel connected to meaning in medicine while practicing at the very highest standard of care.

​​​​​​​Wellness/Empathy in Medicine

Our 12-person cohort (3 residents per class) offers a close-knit learning environment, while also connecting residents to our extensive alumni network across the country. Our Med-Peds family has many opportunities to bond through activities like the annual Med-Peds camping trip in the Uinta Mountains, Halloween costume parties, and holiday gift exchange and hot drink parties. We host monthly journal clubs in residents' homes that always combine a research article and humanism essay.

All interns are offered the option to participate in the U of U’s Graduate Medical Education Wellness Elective, which provides two weeks of protected time to explore concepts such as mindfulness, narrative medicine and poetry, peer support, and psychological safety. All interns in the U of U system receive the option for opt-out counseling in their intern year through the GME Wellness Office. Additionally, the new X+Y schedule ensures at least one full weekend off each month during intern year. 

Our program also affords flexibility in scheduling and elective development. After their first year, residents can choose when to switch between Internal Medicine and Pediatrics, and many residents have chosen to create their own electives.

Clinical Excellence

Our residents benefit from the combined strengths of two exceptional departments and hospitals. The U of U Department of Pediatrics is one of the largest pediatric departments in the country, and Primary Children’s Hospital, with its five state catchment area of over 1 million children, is a nationally ranked children’s hospital. The Department of Internal Medicine has been committed to high quality patient care, education, and research for over 75 years, and the University of Utah Hospital, also a high volume referral center, has been voted in the Top 10 Vizient Hospitals for quality and safety every year since 2009. 

Our program also offers rigorous training beyond Salt Lake City, with rural electives available in Anaconda, MT, Tooele, UT, Indian Health Services sites in Shiprock, NM, and Chinle, AZ, and Utah Navajo Health System sites in Blanding and Montezuma Creek, UT. We also have a long history of partnerships and rotations available in global sites such as Rwanda, India, Nepal, and Colombia. 

​​​​​​​Research, Education, and Leadership

We work to support the interests and goals of each resident. With a research budget of more than $500 million, the University of Utah has ample opportunities for investigation, from basic science to clinical research. Our resident research has included topics such as natural language processing to facilitate holistic review in recruitment to multi-site national efforts to improve transitions of care for patients with spina bifida.

We look forward to meeting you and introducing you to our program in the Wasatch Range of the Rocky Mountains! We feel lucky to live in a place that combines views of the mountains from almost every hospital window and outdoor recreation minutes away with a city that has a vibrant food, music, and art scene. We hope you’ll love it too!

Casey Gradick, Med Peds Program Director

Casey Gradick, MD, MPH
Program Director