About the Program
Clinical Training
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Outpatient Continuity Practice—Throughout the program, residents spend at least two half-days per week in their continuity practice sites. Residents are fully incorporated into regular multidisciplinary team meetings where we focus on how to improve quality of care for the patients we serve.
- Adult Inpatient Medicine—A total of six months of inpatient medicine and one month of ICU. Supervision is provided by Family Medicine, Internal Medicine, and Geriatrics trained attending to provide a variety of clinical experiences. Morning Report and Noon Conference (lunch provided) five days per week.
- Obstetrics—40-60 deliveries in the first two blocks of internship. Opportunity to train with obstetricians, family physicians and nurse midwives. Two family medicine Maternal and Child Health fellows per year add to the educational milieu. There are opportunities to do additional shifts on the OB deck during 2nd and 3rd year.
- Pediatrics—Wide variety of experiences which include two months in a high volume pediatric emergency department, inpatient, outpatient and community-based programs. Total of six months of experience.
Community Hospital in a University Setting
The best of both worlds. It is such a trite phrase, and yet so perfectly describes Highland Hospital. Highland Hospital is a 270 bed hospital tucked into the edge of Highland Park, approximately one mile from the large university hospital, Strong Memorial. Highland is the oldest hospital in Rochester, founded in 1889 as a homeopathic hospital, and where insulin was first used in the United States.
Highland is our hospital, the site of the third oldest family medicine program in the country, a hospital where family medicine has been part of the culture since 1969, when family medicine was first established as a specialty.
It is a hospital with a rich history of collaboration, where family physicians, internists, and subspecialists greet each other warmly and curbside consult each other over coffee at Primary Care Grand Rounds every Tuesday morning; where family physician attendings have C-section privileges, attend every resident continuity delivery, and attend on our busy adult medicine inpatient service.
It is a hospital large enough to have excellent services, and yet small enough where you get to know all the cardiologists, nephrologists, OB/GYNs, and surgeons, and they get to know you. They become invested in your education, in you personally.
There are fellowships for family physicians in Geriatrics, Maternal & Child Health, and Palliative Care and which all have active clinical roles in the hospital setting.
Emphasis on Psychosocial Medicine
This aspect of our training truly makes us unique. The goal of psychosocial medicine (PSM) is the development of personal and professional skills. The ability of Family Physicians to communicate with patients and to think on a systems level is what sets us apart and allows us to function as excellent clinicians. A few highlights of this rotation:
- 40% of residents’ time is spent in their outpatient practice, providing an opportunity to implement many of their PSM skills and truly experience continuity with their patients.
- All residents will be trained in Suboxone as part of this rotation.
- Residents participate in a Family Systems Medicine Practicum co-taught by a family physician and a family therapist
- Short-term primary care counseling, core seminars and educational experiences in alcoholism and chemical dependency, parent counseling, eating disorders, psychopharmacology, and child psychiatry
- Intensive small group experience with an analytically oriented psychiatrist, providing an opportunity for self-reflection and education about the dynamics of small groups.
In total, the Psychosocial Medicine rotation is generally considered pivotal in the development of every family physician. Read more detailed information.
Other Program Highlights
- Home of the biopsychosocial model.
- MedHub electronic evaluation system and home to all curricula, goals and objectives for all rotations.
- Onsite, weekly faculty-supervised resident sessions for general procedures and for colposcopies.
- Diabetic, chronic pain, exercise, wellness and smoking cessation group visits.
- On-site Behavioral Health Services.
- Opportunity to provide palliative care at two-bed hospice unit.
- All University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) programs are free from pharmaceutical company representatives.
- One of only 14 Preparing the Personal Physician for Practice (P4) residency programs in the country: 3-year HRSA Title VII grant completed in Spring of 2012. The principles of P4 have been integrated into our P2 rotation.