West Jersey-Memorial Family Practice Residency at Virtua


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Curriculum

	First year
	Obstetrics	2 months
	Pediatrics	2 months
	ER	1 month
	Surgery	2 months
	Night Float	1 1/2 months
	OB Float	1 month
	Musculoskeletal	1 month
	Family Medicine	1 1/2 months
	Second year
	Intensive Care Unit	1 1/2 months
	Family Medicine	1 1/2 months
	Intensive Care Unit Float	1 1/2 months
	Emergency Room	1 month
	Nursery-NICU	1 month
	Community Medicine /Family Pscyh & Violence	1 month
	EUOO (Otolaryngology, Opthalmology, Urlogy, Oral)	1 month
	Cardiology	1 month
	Practice Management	1 month
	Sub-Specialties (Dermatology, Colorectal, GI)	1 1/2 months
	Third Year
	Musculoskeletal	1 month
	Family Medicine	3 months
	Gynecology	1 month
	Geriatrics	1 month
	Pediatrics	1 month
	Electives	4 months
	Focused FPC Care	1 month

Night Float: On the PGY1 and PGY2 night float rotations, our residents' only duty is in the hospital from 7PM to 8AM Sunday through Thursday evening. This frees the other PGY2 or PGY3 residents during the week and their weekend call averages one call every four weekends.

Call for Tatem Brown FP and the Family Medicine Center is pooled by PGY-2 and PGY-3 grouping.

Conferences: Our “Clinical Inquiry” Program

With the emphasis our program places on learning through evidence, and with the need to focus residents on the long term learning process of physicians, we made a radical change in 2003. We abandoned the traditional "sit and listen" concept of medical training in favor of a participant driven evidence based program. During our academic block, which is held for four hours on Wednesday mornings, PGY1, PGY2, PGY3 residents and faculty have a broad 2 hour discussion of a topic through case-based discussions focusing on the newest evidence balanced with practical applications. The cases are presented a week in advance and then discussion focuses on the evidence discovered by the residents which would drive the clinical decisions. Residents are expected to have researched this in advance during the week and come prepared to present what they have found as well as how they may manage this in their own practices. The group comes to consensus on which pieces of information were most evidence based, and thereby, the topic conclusions. The session frequently ends with a journal club article chosen by a senior resident which highlights one of the specific questions related to the topic.

Longitudinal Training

At West Jersey-Memorial we are proud of our longitudinal focus and have included examples of some of our unique core experiences:

Obstetrics: Although our PGY1 residents are responsible for a minimum of 10 continuity deliveries, all of our residents continue their experience through longitudinal obstetrics call at West Jersey Voorhees Division in their PGY1, PGY2, and PGY3 years. This guarantees each resident approximately 50 deliveries by graduation. Additionally, all residents complete the AAFP ALSO course (Advanced Life Support in Obstetrics) in their PGY1 year.

Community Service: Our community medicine experience is comprised of three separate elements: a one month R2 Community and Adolescent Medicine Rotation, a community project, and a community service component.

During the rotation, residents spend time at Vision Quest (an adolescent correctional facility), the Burlington County Department of Health, Occupational Medicine, and an outline tutorial on Bioterrorism. Additionally, residents focus a project on a public health issue unique to Burlington County which is researched and submitted to the faculty coordinator and Director of the County health department at the end of the rotation. The project is expected to focus on the unique role of the community physician in identification of public health risks, as well as the commitment to the community at large. Some examples of projects include evaluation of a MRSA outbreak, advice to parents on N. meningitis in a classroom, and questionable measles case.

Last, but not least, all residents are required to complete a community service project of their choice. Recent selections have included Tar Wars, Teddy Bear and Doll clinic, Baby and Me, the Philly AIDS Walk, and a community health fair.

Practice Management: All residents are responsible for appropriate coding and charges on their patients from the first. They are provided a monthly breakdown of their panel and are required to attend monthly staff meetings to discuss office policy. For all patients, our approach is on cost-effective care and access to resources.

Additionally, in the PGY-2 year there is a one month rotation in practice management which is taught as a graduate level seminar and project course. In addition to the routine office management issues of budgets and billing, residents reflect on the overall patient satisfaction issues unique to them by the development of an individual assessment project for patient feedback.

Additionally, PGY-2 residents are required to perform a quality analysis of their own patient database and establish ongoing audit parameters to be measured in one year. As a tool to understand lifelong learning, all residents on outside rotations are expected to cultivate answers to a series of questions on evidence based learning and growth, and reflect on them in a personal journal format.

Home Visits: Second and third year residents are expected to care for a selected number of homebound patients under faculty direction. Residents learn to work closely with ancillary providers in the community to provide their patients with optimal care.