While its emphasis is on preventive medicine, the Family Medicine Residency Program also familiarizes residents with more specialized areas such as cardiology, HIV, pediatrics and women's health.  A sampling of rotations includes:

• Internal Medicine, including exposure to complicated inpatient cases not seen at most community hospitals.  All under the supervision of our family medicine fauculty
• Pediatrics, with a balanced exposure to routine, acute and high-risk pediatrics, including Intensive Care Nursery
• Women's Health, including gynecology, pre-natal, delivery and post-natal care at our busy Women’s Center with a perinatologist supervising the residents in a very sophisticated obstetrical care environment

• Critical Care, including daily rounds with an intensivist and PharmD
• Cardiology, with onsite exposure to patients from stress test to CABG
• Rural Medicine, focused on the medical management related to acute and chronic conditions found throughout MMC's rural service area. Common conditions include coronary heart disease, pneumoconiosis, hypertension and diabetes
• Emergency Medicine, including management of routine and complex ED cases in MMC's state-of-the-art emergency department and the Level I Regional Resource Trauma Center
• Surgical Subspecialties, with exposure to outpatient ophthalmology, orthopedics, urology and otorhinolaryngology cases
• Dermatology, including experience with unusual dermatologic cases under the supervision of three board-certified dermatologists

Additional opportunities include:

• Community medicine, with opportunities for participation in health fairs and The Free Medical Clinic
• Electives for second- and third-year students in medical subspecialties, surgical subspecialties or research

Our program also emphasizes educational conferences.  While some programs have educational sessions once a week, ours includes a daily noon conference and a two-hour resident conference once a week. To further foster an open and productive learning environment, we have developed several other venues to help residents gain better insight into their profession. These include:

• weekly resident group meetings in the first year to discuss patient care and personal issues in a supportive setting
• monthly Balint-type meetings
• seminars and journal club to teach residents how to critique medical literature
• monthly lectures on psychiatry, obstetrics/gynecology, pediatrics and emergency medicine
• quarterly Structured Learning Sessions. Based on the small group stations of ACLS these highly participatory small group sessions cover topics from HIV to domestic violence

The remainder of the noon conferences are organized around monthly themes, such as neurology or cardiology.

In-house on-call responsibilities are handled by a team of second- and first-year residents. The third-year on-call resident takes call from home and is available for questions and back-up as needed. On average, second year call is every fifth night. First year residents do four (4) x 2 week rotations on Night Float covering Internal Medicine, OB and Pediatrics.

Our residents also work collaboratively with other residents in Internal Medicine, General Surgery, Pathology, Transitional Year and AOA Internship programs. The programs borrow from the collective strengths of each other, offering residents:

• a broader and more complex teaching experience than can be found at most community hospitals
• a large number of faculty representing many disciplines
• diverse resident-to-resident interaction, within and among various residencies
• increased educational opportunities, especially for primary care residents

The economies of scale that come with multiple residency programs also allow MMC to purchase state-of-the-art training equipment, such as the METI Human Patient Simulator (HPS). The HPS is a computer model-driven, full-size adult and child mannequin that is physiologically based and able to react to interventions in real time. It has a heartbeat and pulse and accurately mirrors human responses to CPR, medications, intubation, catheterizations and other procedures.  Our interns orientation is conducted in part in the simulation lab where they are trained in procedures such as central lines and suturing and then their proficiency is verified through state of the art video recording.

At MMC, Family Medicine residents and faculty are well respected, and work side-by-side with residents and faculty in other medical specialties. This collaborative process contributes to the success of our program and is one reason why nearly half of our residents remain in the area to begin their medical career.