Our residents benefit from a forward-focused, four-year-style curriculum rolled into a three-year training program, replete with opportunities to lead resuscitations of acutely ill and injured patients across the breadth of emergency medicine practice environments.
Hand in hand with exceptional clinical training, our program provides personalized career development, invested mentorship, and a Midwestern culture that's supportive, conscientious, and dedicated to helping you create the career to which you've always aspired. UW Health is recognized as one of the most progressive and prominent medical centers in the country, and through its partnership with the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, is leading health sciences research and practice to advance health equity for all. So #WhyUWEM?
BECAUSE UW IS...
01 More than just exceptional clinical training
- Focused mentorship from passionate, caring and accomplished faculty
- Actively foster incredible camaraderie within the residency
- Extensive elective time for niche development
- Longitudinal training in quality improvement & patient safety
- Advanced training opportunities with a unique "3+1" program structure
02 An all-around great place to live and work
Madison, Wisconsin
- #1 Top 100 Best Places to Live In America (Livability 2022)
- Sports Illustrated's #1 college town in America
- #2 Fittest City in the U.S. (Mens Health 2019)
- #5 Best Places to Live for Families (U.S. News & World Report, 2021)
- #6 city in the nation for quality of life (U.S. News & World Report, 2022)
- Top city for successful women per capita (Forbes 2019)
- Top 10 Happiest Cities in the World (NatGeo 2015)
UW Health System
- #1 hospital in Wisconsin for ten years in a row (U.S. News & World Report)
- University Hospital is named 28th in the world among the top 200 best hospitals (Newsweek and Statista)
- Gold Level Center for Excellence in ECMO
- Magnet®-designated facilities for nursing excellence and quality patient care
- Recognized Leader in LGBTQ Healthcare Equality
- One of only a few academic centers in the U.S. recognized as a Center of Excellence for Antimicrobial Stewardship by the IDSA
03 Nationally recognized in education and research
- A top academic department nationwide for federal research funding in emergency medicine
- Financial scholarships to attend national educational conferences and global health experiences
- One of a few critical care transport medicine programs in the world to fly full-time with a BC/BE physician on every flight
- UW-Madison ranks 27th among higher education institutions worldwide by the Center for World University Rankings
"This is an agile program, it's a committed program. It's a program that listens to residents and works collaboratively to make sure they get the best training." - Joshua Ross, MD, Associate Professor
Ask residents here what sets the University of Wisconsin apart, and you're bound to get a dozen different answers. That's because there is no single experience that defines training at UW. Whether it’s the top-notch clinical experience, endless opportunities for scholarly engagement, individualized mentorship and leadership training, or the sense of purpose in serving the surrounding community, our trainees thrive in a department where the residency program is central to its mission.
"My education at UW has been better than I could ever have expected. The support of faculty and senior residents, along with comprehensive onboarding and training that spans the first five weeks of intern year fully prepared me to walk into my first rotations outside of the emergency department. I have access to educational tools and resources, and the PD/APDs are flexible to work with me in a way that is congruent with my personal learning style. The 'cherry on the top' of the program, however, is the phenomenal teaching and mentorship I've received from UW faculty during my shifts in the ED."
Rudi Zurbuchen, MD, chief resident
"Intern year off-service rotations provide invaluable opportunities to translate EM experiences into new clinical environments and bring lessons learned from those environments back into the ED. My lessons from the Cardiac ICU came back into play when seeing a patient whose home health nurse found him in an irregular heart rhythm with a systolic pressure in the 50’s. I found myself able to calmly consent and prepare him for sedation and cardioversion because – despite my arterial line confirming that pressure, and a bedside ultrasound showing an EF of 10% – he was alert, lucid, and perfusing the whole time.
I realized how comfortable I’d gotten with previously intimidating clinical scenarios, and how much I’d learned in a short time by working under our incredible EM and off-service fellows and faculty."
Tad Schmitt, MD, Class of 2022
Choosing the residency at UW is a decision that will not only impact your life and career, but will help shape the future of Emergency Medicine. Our graduates leave residency with skills and confidence to pursue their diverse passions and join a close-knit network of alumni that stretches across the United States and around the globe.
From community medical directors to residency program leaders, professional sports team physicians to institutional directors of disaster medicine, our graduates are advancing patient care, medical education, and healthcare policy across our field.
The impact that our graduates are making in our communities inspires us to move FORWARD, always FOCUSED on improving our specialty by developing game-changing leaders in emergency medicine who share our mission throughout Wisconsin and beyond.
- Alumni Spotlight -
Carrie Harvey, MD
Michigan Medicine
Following residency in Madison, Dr. Harvey became the first Emergency Medicine graduate to complete the Anesthesiology Critical Care Fellowship at the University of Michigan. She now serves as the Emergency Medicine Residency APD at Michigan Medicine while also working clinically in both the ED and ICU.
Class of 2014 
| Ann Arbor, MI 
Chris Ford, MD
Columbia St. Mary's Hospital
Ever passionate about pediatric emergency care, Dr. Ford leads PEM care at Columbia St. Mary's Hospital and serves on Wisconsin's Emergency Medical Services for Children (EMSC) advisory committee. He also co-founded the Dyslexic Medical Professionals Group and is an advocate for civic health engagement and social EM.
Class of 2017 | Milwaukee, WI
Alex Ebinger, MD, CAQSM
University of Colorado
Dr. Ebinger is a dually boarded Emergency Medicine and Sports Medicine provider (one of fewer than 200 in the country). In addition to his academic faculty position at CU Medicine, he is a team physician for the Colorado Rockies (MLB), Colorado Avalanche (NHL), and Denver Broncos (NFL) and has also cared for the U.S. Ski and Snowboard and U.S. Speedskating teams.
Class of 2013 | Aurora, CO
Michael Repplinger, MD, PHD
University of Wisconsin
Dr. Repplinger is an accomplished researcher and clinician working to improve the care of patients with opioid use disorder. He is board-certified in addiction medicine and co-chairs the Wisconsin Psychiatric Association Emergency Psych Joint Task Force, which addresses the complexities of assessing the medical stability of patients presenting to emergency departments with acute mental illness.
Class of 2010 | Madison, WI
Erica Peethumnongsin, MD
Duke University
As EM Ultrasound Director, Dr. Peethumnongsin oversees EM resident ultrasound education and launched Duke's first emergency ultrasound fellowship.
Trained in an emergency ultrasound fellowship at Washington Hospital Center, Erica is also working to develop a longitudinal point-of-care ultrasound educational curriculum in Tanzania.
Class of 2015 | Durham, NC
Holly Caretta-Weyer, MD
Stanford University
Dr. Caretta-Weyer is the Associate Residency Program Director for the Stanford University emergency medicine residency program and EPA/CBME Implementation Lead at the Stanford University School of Medicine.
Holly is also the PI on a $1.3M AMA Reimagining Residency grant focused on redesigning assessment across the continuum of EM training.
Class of 2016 | Stanford, CA
The 'Best Place to Live in America'
Their words, not ours. You can't deny that our residency program is located in an all-around amazing city given the accolades listed below. And oh by the way, Madison, WI is also home to a world-class BIG 10 university and hospitals that are ranked among the best in the world. Ranked the best city to live in the U.S. by Livability.com this year, we think you'll fall in love with Madison as soon as you arrive.
Learn more about life in our city, our state, and the beautiful Midwest >>
Featured Stories
