We had been doing one hour of resident presentations (basic science or some assigned topic, lately we have been presenting sections from score portal) then one hour of SESAP questions (going through it together basically). Followed by M+M, then grand rounds (speaker from a speaker's bureau). It was supposed to be protected time, but often cases would run into that time, and people would of course still be paging us. Other days we have several one hour conferences (combined ED/trauma-one week didactic, one week case presentation; GI;Oncology;ACGME core; Critical Care;Multidisciplinary thoracic-case plus didactic including radiology and pathology; and the newest is multidisciplinary abdominal) that are pseudomandatory. No one could make it to all of them without missing OR and patient care duties, but we are supposed to try. We recently switched from the SESAP questions to a series of quizzes based on mandatory reading (then we argue about why the answers are the way they are). We'll see how that works out. My intern year there were actual lecture from the faculty, but as we have lost several that seems to have gone away. We do have one emeritus faculty member that gives fantastic lectures to the med students, that would be great if adapted to the resident level and done during our protected time instead of yet another powerpoint presentation trying to boil down the anatomy and physiology of the GI system into one hour.
