Welcome to the University of Washington Boise VA Preliminary Year in Internal Medicine!

For nearly 30 years, interns, residents and medical students from the University of Washington School of Medicine have trained at the Boise VA. Interns accepted to the Preliminary Year in Internal Medicine will primarily train at the VA campus, but also rotate to community hospitals in Boise. While our focus is a core curriculum in internal medicine, we offer interns a wide variety of elective experiences, from anesthesiology to nephrology.

The Boise Preliminary Year Internal Medicine (PYIM) program is designed for interns seeking one year of clinical experience prior to training in another discipline. This Liaison Committee on Graduate Medical Education approved program is an integral part of the internal medicine training program of the University of Washington affiliated hospitals.

Located in Boise, Idaho, the residency consists of clinical rotations at the Boise VA Medical Center, St. Luke’s Regional Medical Center and St. Alphonsus Regional Medical Center. The program offers exposure to a broad array of inpatients and elective rotations.

The Boise VA hosts three post-graduate training programs for physicians: ten second year internal medicine residents from the University of Washington Internal Medicine Seattle/Boise track, Family Medicine R1’s from the Family Medicine Residency of Idaho, and this preliminary year track. PYIM R1s on the inpatient medicine service work alongside Family Medicine R1s under the supervision of the University of Washington R2s and faculty. In addition to post-graduate trainees, the Boise VA hosts University of Washington third year medical students while they complete their core clerkship in Internal Medicine.

The Boise Veterans Affairs Medical Center, located in Boise’s historic North End a few blocks from the Idaho State Capitol Building, is a Dean’s Committee hospital. The recently updated hospital features a new building housing the medical clinics, emergency room, up-to-date radiology and clinical laboratory facilities and a 10-bed intensive care unit. The VA is home to the largest medical library in Idaho, housed in a well-equipped learning resource center. Twenty-three VA faculty members of the Department of Medicine of the University of Washington provide expertise in Primary Care Internal Medicine, as well as most subspecialties; 75 additional clinical faculty actively participate in the teaching program. The medical service provides care for all non-surgical, non-psychiatric patients, with no segregation of patients to medical subspecialty services. The ambulatory clinics have steadily expanded in the last several years, and now exceed 180,000 patient visits per year.

Please follow the links above to learn more about our curriculum, job benefits, and bios of our current interns.

Graduating medical students interested in matching to our program should apply through ERAS® - the Electronic Residency Application Service. Please contact Jay Keller (email Ronald.Keller (at) va.gov) or (208) 422-1000 Ext 7896 for more information.