More than 300 new residents have begun work at SHC and affiliated institutions this summer, the largest class of housestaff in the hospital’s history, says Ann Dohn, director of the department of graduate medical education.

The group represents 75 ACGME (Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education) specialties, including three new subspecialties this year — sleep medicine, transfusion medicine and cardiac anesthesia.

Group demographics were being compiled on the group of “half men, half women from really good schools” in late June, Dohn said.

The first interns began work on June 21 with most residents starting on July 2 after a June 29 orientation that represented an historic benchmark: Dohn noted that this was the final orientation in Fairchild Auditorum, where new residents have gathered for decades to clear paperwork, immunizations and learn some policies about their new institution before heading onto the units to be welcomed by senior housestaff, attendings, other staff — and their first patients.

Fairchild, also familiar to more senior physicians as the home for countless medical staff meetings, is scheduled to be razed in September to make way for Medical School construction.