Residents Delivering Care - NYTimes.com You quote a patient in Mount Sinai Medical Center's Eleven West wing as saying, "And I see no people in training - only the best of the best." Her comments reflect misconceptions about how residency training programs function in today's health care environment. Gone are the days when residents acted independently with minimal oversight. Here at Mount Sinai, our internal medicine residents (who are physicians who have graduated from medical school) work on distinct teaching wards in a system consisting of teams of residents, attending supervising physicians, nurses and ancillary staff - all working together to provide the highest quality care for all patients on that ward, regardless of insurance or socioeconomic status. The irony here is that our residents are the first line of care when patients become acutely ill (including on the amenity floor), and this attests to the confidence that everyone in the system has in our house staff. The quoted patient is the beneficiary of "best of the best" physicians who trained under "best of the best" doctors who had the privilege of learning from "best of the best" patients. The writer, a pulmonologist and critical care specialist, is the internal medicine residency program director at Mount Sinai School of Medicine.