UICOMP Graduate Medical Education · Physician Innovator Track
Two lanes run the length of this track. One holds the moments when people are in a room together — onboarding, the continuity hour, the gates, the field block. The other holds the steady, unwitnessed work of writing things down, which never stops and is where most of the learning actually shows.
The gold marks are punctuation. The brown ribbon is the sentence.
Once the track opens in July 2027, this cycle repeats until graduation. Everything on the dated timeline below sits on top of it.
Every week
Twenty minutes, written the same week, never edited afterward. Resident, in Notion.
Nights and weekends
Observation does not keep business hours. Notion on a personal phone — a rough entry at 3am beats a polished one written a week later.
As work happens
Small, frequent commits to the repo. One AI ledger row per working session.
Weeks 1, 5, 9…
The whole cohort plus faculty. A live problem, an SME guest, or open critique — not a progress report.
Weeks 3, 7, 11…
Twenty minutes each inside the same hour. The resident sets the agenda and sends it a day ahead.
Within 7 days
Faculty return three questions for every assertion. Missing this window is a program failure, not a delay.
Every quarter
Repo closed, notes closed. Five questions, answered out loud, ending with how you are different now.
December and June
Two of the four gates end in a written determination to continue. A failed project is never grounds for withdrawal.
On your own
The trainee guide and the faculty guide contain the same eight commitments. Both sides read both documents. Residents are told to name it when faculty solve the problem for them.
Notion workspace and an empty repo scaffold per resident, folder structure already in place. Notion goes on the resident's personal device as well, so observations can be captured on nights and weekends.
With people
Observation practice in live clinical space, needs identification, systems and design thinking, and the mechanics of the repo and Notion. Residents meet the SME faculty who will read their work for the next two years.
Where perception, judgment, and decision must remain with the learner — and how the ledger proves ownership rather than policing use.
Set the observation and stakeholder counts against this resident's actual rotation schedule. The numbers in the guide are dials; this is where they get turned.
On your own
Forty logged observations with no proposed solutions in any of them. Twenty candidate needs. Ten stakeholder conversations across four role types, with physicians at most three of the ten.
At least one substantive comment per resident every two weeks, in the repo or in Notion, so the work is visibly being read.
With people
One hour every two weeks inside existing protected didactic time. For Internal Medicine that is flexible within the 11:30–1:00 window. Alternating: cohort session, then individual reviews.
On your own
Each retirement gets its reasoning written down. A retired need is a documented asset, not a discard.
Photographed and committed, each with two sentences on what the physical object revealed that a description would not have.
Quality improvement or human subjects research, decided before collection begins. If research, IRB precedes the work.
A short summary of engagement, sent in December and June, so the PD has something concrete for their own review cycle.
With people
The first time the artifacts go away. A weak gate here is information, not a verdict.
Elective time for field travel into resource-gated environments. You travel as a colleague, not a rescuer. A specification written in Peoria survives contact with the field only if it was true.
Month six. The gate runs as usual, then ends in a written determination: continue, continue with conditions, or withdraw. A stalled project is not the signal; a stalled learner is.
By now the need statement should have been defended and revised on evidence at least twice.
Where programs align conference days, the full cohort gathers for a focused stretch. Residents present live problems, not finished answers.
On your own
Observation portfolio, need statement, stakeholder analysis, solution concept, innovation proposal.
Files, commit messages, images, filenames, image metadata. Deleting a file does not remove it from git history.
With people
Month twelve. The year reconstructed end to end, a written continuation determination, then the capstone plan approved or sent back. A plan built on a need the resident has already abandoned once, on evidence, is the strongest kind.
On your own
The disconfirming condition is written before the test is run. If you cannot say what result would tell you that you are wrong, it is not an experiment.
Who bears this burden now, what the smallest version costs, who has to say yes, what it displaces, and what would tell you in ninety days that it is working.
Dated, with the evidence named. A pivot raises the assessment and faculty say so at the moment it happens.
With people
September, December, March. December is the month-eighteen checkpoint and carries a written continuation determination. The probe at every one of them: tell me about the moment you changed your mind.
Field work in service of a specific test now, rather than open observation. What comes back with the cohort is ground truth.
Brought in early enough that a public repo or a poster has not already created a disclosure problem. Commercialization is one pathway, never the measure.
On your own
Innovation portfolio assembled from the repo, and a manuscript or other scholarly product where the work supports one.
The Pages site tells the journey including the retirements and reversals. The false starts are the evidence, so they stay in.
With people
Prototype or pilot presented publicly.
Nothing on the screen. What you experienced, what you noticed, what AI contributed, what judgment stayed yours, and how you are different now.
Into the alumni collaborative, and back into the track as mentors for the cohort behind you.
Two missed weekly entries starts a conversation within three days. Not an email, and not a demerit.
Residency is hard and this track sits on top of it. The austerity is intellectual — it applies to withholding easy answers, never to withholding support. When the load is wrong, the dials move.