The rotation in Missoula is flexible: Dr. Schlesinger recruits teaching preceptors based on the interests and learning goals of the resident. It’s a particularly good fit for those interested in working with subspecialists who practice in a smaller community that serves a large geographic area.
Missoula is a mid-sized community in western Montana which also serves much of northern Idaho. Missoula is home to the University of Montana, and convenient to Glacier National Park; Yellowstone National Park is a few hours’ drive away. Winter provides convenient access to a number of venues for skiing, so bring your gear!
Glacier National Park (Courtesy Justin Strote)
Availability:
All year
Community:
Mid-size (57,000)
Contact info:
Primary Preceptor:
Peggy Schlesinger, MD
406-549-2374
peggy.schlesinger@gmail.com
Residents who’ve been there:
- Janet Lee
- Adam Jayne-Jensen
- Katie Volkman
- Annie Chen
My one month rotation at Missoula was a great and highly recommendable experience in all aspects: work, learning opportunities, conferences, free time, site seeing, skiing, and traveling. The attending I worked with showed pretty solid knowledge of primary care and internal medicine. He showed me how to proceed rationally and efficiently with common conditions seen in a mixed population of young and elderly patients, both from rural and urban settings. It was also an invaluable chance to learn how the medicare system works for primary care practioners, and the nuts and bolts of building an outpatient clinic with a reasonable financial return by seeing mostly medicare-insured patients.
Missoula is extremily friendly, and I had the chance to meet people out of the medical context who I really want to keep in touch to. There are multiple pleasant bars and live music places to know about, not to mention the vast number of outdoor activities to do even during the winter. I myself drove north to the Glacier national park, took pictures of several of the beautiful rocky mountains, spent one weekend in a hot spring at the Lost Trail Pass, where I went skiing in one of the days. Also went snowshoeing, and visited the amazing west Yellowstone. Belive me, there is a lot to see there in January. In summary, I really recommend every internal medicine resident to do one WWAMI rotation in Missoula.