Training Pathways

Training pathways are two year certificate programs that provide residents and fellows with additional knowledge, skills and professional preparation alongside their chosen medical specialty. Participation in a training pathway occurs concurrently with residency or fellowship training.

Training pathways offer:

Demonstrable knowledge and skills for potential employers
Enhanced well-being from work-work diversity
Membership in a community outside of your training program
Better understanding of career paths
Opportunities to take on additional roles
Preparation for the career you want

Explore training pathways

Clinician-Educator Training Pathway

The Clinician-Educator Training Pathway prepares trainees to be successful in a medical education career, with training in teaching strategies, education leadership and research.

Global Health Pathway

The Global Health Pathway engages residents to better understand the social, economic, cultural and environmental factors that contribute to health and disease throughout the world.

Dr. Julia LaMotte giving a book to a sickle cell patient

Healthy Outcomes Training Pathway

The Healthy Outcomes Training Pathway uses a health systems science lens to educate and empower trainees to discuss, identify, act upon and teach about healthy outcomes that differ across groups in their everyday practice of medicine.

Leadership Training Pathway

Knowledge and skills gained through the Leadership Training Pathway will be useful to future leaders in academic medicine and hospital administration.

There is intentional overlap to our programs. When choosing between pathways, consider whether you are likely to incorporate one of these roles into your future career:

Clinician-Educator — This pathway trains physicians who plan to make medical education a significant part of their careers. They might be preparing to be a clinician-educator, program director, course director, faculty developer, etc.
Leadership — This pathway trains physicians to take a leadership role in academic medicine or hospital-based medicine. They might become a division chief, service line leader, director of a clinical unit, etc.
Global Health — This pathway takes a bottom-up approach to health outcomes. If our health care system is a network, this pathway trains individuals to work at any node in the network. We prepare clinicians, educators and researchers to address health disparities internationally and in domestic under-resourced areas.
Healthy Outcomes — This pathway takes a top-down approach to teaching participants to serve as bridges in the health care network. Participants learn to make decisions within domestic health systems using a health systems science and systems thinking lens to address health care gaps.

What will you learn from each pathway?

In all our pathways, you will:

Apply theory and develop skills through a scholarly project
Embed yourself within a community of peers from a variety of programs
Receive career and project mentorship
Better understand career pathways in the field

I want to...	Clinician-Educator	Global Health	Healthy Outcomes	Leadership
Develop advocacy skills		✔	✔ health policy and legislative advocacy
Prepare to be a leader and scholar in medical education	✔
Reduce gaps in patient care	✔	✔ domestically and internationally	✔ domestically	✔
Improve understanding of health systems	✔	✔ domestically and internationally	✔ domestically	✔
Understand the impact of culture on health and disease and build cultural humility		✔	✔
Build skills for community engagement			✔
Teach and communicate about health systems problems			✔
Prepare for leadership in academic medicine or hospital-based practice	✔ academic medicine			✔

Additional Non-Clinical Training Opportunities

In addition to the GME Training Pathways, there are a number of non-clinical IU training opportunities outside of GME. These offerings include certificate programs, graduate degrees and fellowships.

Explore additional training opportunities

GME Pathways Director

Christen K. Dilly, MD, ME

Assistant Dean for Graduate Medical Education

Christen Dilly, MD, is a general gastroenterologist with a career focus on medical education. She truly loves her work, and this drives her to help learners and colleagues develop fulfilling careers. Her clinical practice is at the Roudebush VA Medical Center, where she directs the weight loss clinic, performs endoscopic therapies for Barrett’s esophagus and other upper GI pathologies, and removes large colon polyps. As her capstone project for a Master of Education degree, she developed and now directs the Clinician Educator Training Pathway for residents and fellows across all GME programs. In conjunction with this program, she conducts research into professional identity formation in future educators. She is the co-site director for the GI/nutrition course for second-year medical students. She runs the GI clinical elective and a new online elective for senior medical students. She is the faculty advisor for the GI student interest group and for the GME House Staff Forum. At the fellowship level, she is starting a new role as the chair of the clinical competency committee. She also enjoys faculty development, and she has facilitated several faculty learning communities centered around the scholarship of teaching and learning. She is the co-director of the AGA Academy of Educators, where she is working to help GI educators across the country develop as educators.

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