Medical school teaches you how to think through a diagnosis. What it doesn't teach you is how to function on a medical team, how to take sign-out at 6 AM from a senior who's been up all night, how to call a consult without fumbling through it, or how to keep 12 patients moving at once while writing notes, chasing labs, and fielding pages.
The transition to residency doesn't have to be as painful as it was for most of us.
This is what Intern Year Boot Camp is built for. It's a free, 10-class course I built in partnership with Doximity. The course follows the arc of a single intern day, from the moment your alarm goes off to the moment you finally get home. Each class is 10–15 minutes, practical, and built to be rewatched when things get hard. No pathophysiology review. Just the operational stuff they skipped in medical school.
Below is a breakdown of what the course covers, class by class.
Class 1: Wake Up & Show Up
Intern year is a physical job. You're on your feet for 12-plus hours, making decisions that affect real people, often on inadequate sleep. The interns who burn out by February are usually the ones who sacrificed every personal habit in October.
This class covers the basics: protecting your sleep, building a morning routine that actually prepares you for what's ahead, and walking into the hospital ready—not running in frazzled five minutes late. Small things. But they matter every single day.
Key takeaway: You cannot pour from an empty cup. Protect your baseline (sleep, food, movement) and you'll have the fuel to actually learn.
Class 2: Sign-Out & Setting Up Your Day
Handoffs are one of the highest-risk moments in medicine. Communication failures during transitions of care are a leading cause of preventable harm. When you take sign-out, you're taking on clinical ownership of those patients.
This class covers how to take sign-out the right way: what to listen for, what to write down, and the three questions you should always ask before the outgoing team walks away.
One I use: "Is there anyone you wouldn't be surprised by if they ended up in the ICU tonight?"
That question alone changes what you pay attention to.
Key takeaway: A great sign-out tells you not just what happened but what might happen. Your job is to absorb that and walk into pre-rounds with a plan, not a question mark.
Class 3: Your Patient List — The Command Center
Your patient list is your operating system for the day. A good list saves you time every hour. A bad one creates confusion every hour.
This class breaks down what belongs on a functional list (the one-liner, active issues, key vitals, pending items, to-dos, code status) and what clutters it. It also covers the one cognitive discipline that separates good interns from great ones: writing a one-liner that forces you to actually understand what the core problem is.
If you can't write the one-liner, you don't fully understand the patient yet. That's your cue to dig deeper.
Key takeaway: Your list should be something a colleague could pick up mid-shift and use without asking a single clarifying question.
Class 4: Pre-Rounding & Presenting on Rounds
Pre-rounding is the 60–90 minutes before formal rounds where you see your patients, check their overnight course, and build the plan you'll present. Most interns treat it like a data collection exercise. It's not. It's your chance to think.
This class walks through the pre-rounding framework (overnight events → subjective → objective → assessment → plan), how to construct a clean one-liner and SOAP-style presentation, and how to walk into rounds having already done the thinking—not doing it during your presentation.
Your attending already knows the plan. The pre-round is for you to master gathering data, interpreting it, and formulating your own assessment.
Key takeaway: Rounds is where you show the team you understand your patients. The work that makes that possible happens before you walk in.
Class 5: Getting Tasks Done
Rounds end and suddenly you have 30 tasks across eight patients. Labs to follow, notes to write, consults to call, discharges to prep, families to update. This is the part of intern year that breaks people who don't have a system.
The interns who stay afloat aren't always the most knowledgeable. They're the most organized.
This class covers how to triage your task list immediately after rounds, when to write your notes (while the thinking is fresh—not at the end of the day), and how to close the loop so nothing falls through the cracks.
Key takeaway: Task management is a skill, not a personality trait. Build a system on day one and refine it over time.
Class 6: Calling Consults & Working the Team
Every intern dreads their first consult call. You're calling a subspecialist, you're not sure what to say, and you're worried about looking like you don't know what you're doing.
Here's what consultants actually want: clarity, not perfection.
This class covers the SBAR framework for consult calls, how to work effectively with nurses and pharmacists (both are underutilized by most), and how to communicate professionally across the team. Medicine is a team sport. The interns who do well are the ones who communicate clearly and treat every member of the team—regardless of title—with the same professionalism they'd want in return.
Key takeaway: Clarity is the skill. Build it early.
Class 7: Talking to Patients & Families
Medical school teaches you what to say to your attending. It doesn't always teach you what to say to your patient. These are completely different conversations.
Your patient doesn't care about the BMP. They care about when they're going home, whether they're going to be okay, and whether you actually know what you're doing. This class covers how to translate the clinical picture into something they can act on and trust—and how to run a family meeting with structure and empathy, even when you don't have all the answers.
As an intern, you will also need to introduce goals of care conversations. This class gives you a framework for that too.
Key takeaway: Patients remember how you made them feel long after they've forgotten what you said. Be honest, clear, and present.
Class 8: Noon Conference & Learning on the Job
Residency is supposed to be your most intensive period of medical learning. It's also the year you have the least time to sit down and study. The interns who grow the most learn in motion—at the bedside, between notes, in the fifteen minutes before noon conference starts.
This class covers how to make noon conference work for you, which resources are actually worth building into your routine (UpToDate, Core IM, The Curbsiders), and how to use AI tools responsibly without letting them replace your clinical reasoning.
The rule: if you don't understand why an AI tool gave you a recommendation, don't act on it until you do.
Key takeaway: Learning in residency is about building habits—one question per patient, ten minutes of reading per case—and letting the compound effect do the work.
Here’s the class so you can see what it looks like!
Class 9: Discharge Planning & Signing Out
Discharge planning doesn't start the morning someone is ready to go home. It starts on admission. The best interns are thinking about discharge criteria from day one.
This class covers the full discharge checklist (medications reconciled, follow-up arranged, instructions reviewed verbally — not just printed), how to write a discharge summary that bridges inpatient and outpatient care, and how to give a sign-out at the end of your shift that you'd actually want to receive.
It also covers something most programs skip: end-of-day decompression. You cannot be a sustainable clinician if you never turn off.
Key takeaway: Discharge is where a lot of patient harm happens. Own the process for your patients the way you own the workup.
Class 10: The Long Game
Intern year is relentless in the present tense. But it exists within a longer arc.
The decisions you make in the next twelve months—how you treat people, how you carry yourself, what you pursue outside the hospital—shape what comes after. Reputation in medicine is built faster than you think, and in smaller moments than you expect. The consultant remembers the intern who was organized and respectful on the phone. The nurse remembers the intern who followed through.
This class covers how to build your reputation intentionally, how to think through specialty selection without letting prestige or peer pressure drive the decision, and how to sustain yourself—professionally, financially, and personally—through a demanding career.
Key takeaway: Intern year is a sprint that exists inside a marathon. Every small decision you make about how you show up is building the physician you're going to be for the next forty years. Start that build intentionally.
Take the Course — It's Free
Intern Year Boot Camp is free in partnership with Doximity, and available now through Huddle University. Ten classes. Roughly two hours of total content. Built to be watched before your first day, and rewatched whenever things get hard.
If you're an incoming intern, a rising MS4 starting to think about residency, or a program director looking for something to share with your incoming class—this is it.
