Chief Residents 2023 – 2024

Welcome to Regions!  Here in Saint Paul, our Hospital serves as a center for Level I Adult and Pediatric Trauma, Heart, Stroke, and Regional Burn.  Formerly Ramsey County, we serve a unique and diverse community of under-served and privately-insured patients within not only the East Metro area, but greater Minnesota, and Western Wisconsin as well. 

As a tertiary and high acuity center, our residents are exposed to a large volume of critically ill patients, trauma, and procedures.  We pride our program on limited graduated roles, and encourage early advanced responsibility to allow our residents to develop their clinical acumen, resuscitation skills, and procedural competencies over all three years of residency, starting day one of first year.  Our interns are expected to help manage our sickest patients from the start, and lead all medical airways, meaning you could be intubating, placing central lines, and providing an ICU level of care on your first shift as a resident here. We additionally provide extensive experience in critical care medicine by providing 24/7 coverage in the Surgical ICU, with extended Medical ICU coverage, as well as time dedicated to orthopedics, toxicology, pediatrics, prehospital medicine, ultrasound, among many other disciplines.

In the setting of a high acuity, high volume and critical care focused curriculum, we continue to emphasize wellness in our clinical rotations as well as our lives outside of the hospital.  Leadership here is constantly seeking resident feedback and using this to improve our clinical experiences, continuously tailoring them to be as beneficial to our learning as possible. Our latest improvements as of this year include a revamped pediatrics curriculum, including NICU and PICU experiences for our interns, promoting care and procedural competency for critically ill children, as well as an improved ICU schedule for our seniors, with an emphasis on autonomy while on shift and better work-life balance while off.  The residency prioritizes streamlined documentation and a sign out culture that allows our residents to leave their shifts on time.  Our wellness committee plans regular gatherings for our residents, faculty, and nursing, which promotes the already collegial and collaborative relationship amongst the ED staff.  Our residents have a diverse set of interests, participating in numerous rec league sports, local festivals, sporting events and concerts, exploring our beautiful Minnesota outdoors, and volunteering in our community.  Every year our interns also attend SAEM for some fun bonding time with each other and many of our clinical staff, and the residency as a whole takes time off every fall for a retreat.

We believe that our unique location, early autonomy, extensive critical care experience, with an emphasis on resident wellness, combined with our experienced faculty and outstanding hospital culture, make the Regions Emergency Medicine Residency Program an amazing place to train.

Nate Baggett, MD, Autumn Pace, MD, Heather Kaluzniak, MD and Will Bleifuss, MD