Family Medicine Woodland Hills Medical Center - Curriculum
Goals and Objectives
The goal of our three year curriculum is to create exceptionally well-trained, well-rounded, and compassionate physicians who are adept at both the science and art of medicine. We expect that our physicians, upon graduation, will be capable of practicing in almost any environment and expertly handle the majority of medical issues that confront them.
Teaching Program
The strengths of our program lie in our emphasis on providing the full scope of outpatient family medicine care as well as offering excellent inpatient, dermatology, procedural, clinical ultrasound, women’s health and musculoskeletal/ sports medicine training. We strive to continually provide high-quality and high-volume training in these areas and offer residents exposure to patients of all ages spanning from pediatrics to geriatrics.
We also have maintained the tradition of being resident friendly, while graduating the most marketable and competitive physicians. Graduates of our Family Medicine residency program are prepared to provide care in a variety of health care settings—rural, urban, and academic—and maintain a broad scope of practice from perinatal care to geriatrics. Our faculty is composed of graduates from different residency programs, offering you exposure to diverse styles of practice and schooling. In-house attending physicians, available 24 hours a day for supervision, offer an additional advantage.
Scholarly activities
Per ACGME requirements, each resident must complete two scholarly activities during their three years of residency, including a quality improvement project. Our residents’ scholarly activities vary and may include publications, poster presentations, and lecture presentations at regional meetings. Furthermore, these scholarly activities provide residents the opportunity to pursue an area of interest in more detail. Our faculty research director provides guidance and support to residents in order to make this a manageable and enjoyable process. Elective time may be used to pursue research projects and scholarly activities with the approval of the Program Director. Financial and statistical support is available and our residency will assist in preparing a professional poster for the resident.
Rotations
Rotations: **Please see our Brochure in the Resources Section of our website for more details about the curriculum**
Rotations for PGY 1: Adult Inpatient Medicine, Emergency Medicine, Obstetrics, Surgery (including OR), Critical Care (ICU), Otolaryngology, Ophthalmology, Cardiology, Pediatric Emergency Medicine, Pediatric Inpatient Medicine, and Behavioral Sciences
Rotations for PGY 2: Adult Inpatient Medicine, Gynecology, Obstetrics, Newborn Nursery, Ambulatory Pediatrics, Pediatric Urgent Care, Pediatric Emergency Medicine, Musculoskeletal Health (includes Sports Medicine, Orthopedics, Rheumatology and Physical Medicine), Gastroenterology, Geriatrics, Behavioral Sciences and Elective time (2 weeks)
Rotations for PGY3: Adult Inpatient Medicine, Emergency Medicine, Dermatology, Ambulatory Pediatrics, Sports Medicine & Student Health, Geriatrics, Surgical Walk-in, Addiction Medicine and Pain Management, and Elective time (22 weeks)
Electives: Our residents can choose from a variety of electives including urology, nephrology, pulmonary medicine, sports medicine & musculoskeletal health, allergy & immunology, urgent care clinic, LGBTQ health, and a study elective for board preparation. In order to learn more about a particular area of medicine of their choosing or to experience a different practice environment, residents can also create their own electives.
Clinical Experiences
The inpatient team is composed of two teams. The intern team consists of two interns who are supervised by both a third year resident and attending physician. The other team consists of a second year resident who is supervised by a separate attending physician. Family medicine faculty members and hospitalists make up the attending staff.
The Family Medicine clinic residents are assigned their own panel of patients to allow patient-physician bonding and provide continuity of care. Each resident is provided with Medical Assistant support to enhance the clinic experience. First year residents begin by seeing two patients per half day and after several months will be seeing up to 5 patients per half day. By graduation, the residents see between 9 to 10 patients per half day including a combination of face-to-face visits, telephone appointment visits and video visits.
Our residents are given ample elective time during their training to pursue areas of interest. The second year residents are given two weeks of elective time and third year residents are given 22 weeks of elective time, four weeks of which can be done away from the medical center (out-of-state or out of the country).
Medical students regularly rotate through clerkships with our residency program including UCLA medical students performing their third year family medicine clerkship and fourth year students performing sub-internships or rotating through our community medicine elective. Additionally, Kaiser Permanente School of Medicine students rotate on our family medicine inpatient service and in our family medicine clinic. Our residents are actively involved with the education of these medical students both in the clinic settings and on the inpatient service.
Integrated into our family practice clinic we have four specialized resident teaching clinics including the Dermatology, Procedure, Sports Medicine and Gynecology. There is extensive hands-on teaching in these clinics. The dermatology clinic is staffed by a staff dermatologist and two resident physicians. The residents in this clinic will learn how to perform common dermatology procedures including shave and punch biopsies, electrodessication and curettage, liquid nitrogen treatment of skin lesions, etc. The procedure clinic provides services like IUD placement, EMB’s, removal of “lumps and bumps”, cortisone injections, and circumcisions, etc. The clinic is staffed by family practice faculty who directly observe and mentor the residents while they perform the procedures. Our sports medicine clinic is supervised by two Board-Certified Sports Medicine faculty. Residents will be exposed to a variety of common sports medicine and musculoskeletal conditions including common shoulder, hip and knee conditions. Supervised by a board-certified OB/Gyn, the resident gynecology clinic offers residents training in how to manage a variety of common women’s health issues including heavy or abnormal menstrual bleeding, contraceptive care, vulvar and vaginal disorders, and pelvic pain to name a few.
With a dedicated ultrasound-trained faculty, we provide musculoskeletal and non-musculoskeletal clinical ultrasound training including offering several workshops per year and using ultrasound in settings such as inpatient medicine and our sports medicine clinic.
Community Service
The Woodland Hills Family Medicine Residency Program is actively involved in several community clinics. Our residency program has a community medicine fellow who is specifically dedicated to working with our residents the community clinics that we serve. The residents rotate through the various free clinics on a longitudinal basis throughout their residency. Our community medicine sites include the Free Clinic of Simi Valley, Conejo Valley Free Clinic, and the Teen Clinic based out of James Monroe High School. For residents who have a passion for community health, there is an opportunity to complete our community medicine health track.
Additionally, the residents and faculty provide medical support for the Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Marathon and have ample opportunities to provide medical support at a variety of other community sporting and outdoor events. In fact, our residents heavily participated in the 2015 Special Olympics in Los Angeles, including providing host town support to the athletes.
The Department of Family Medicine is involved in the nationally-renowned Reach Out and Read Program. Through this program, our pediatric patients and their families are provided with free books to promote reading in the home.
Our program director is the physician lead for the Hippocrates Circle Program. Through this program our residents, faculty and staff physicians mentor junior high students from local schools to pursue careers in medicine. Most of the students would be the first in the families to attend college and most of them belong to underrepresented minorities that are needed as doctors and future leaders. The students participate in multiple activities such as high tech simulation experiences, lamb heart dissections, ethics discussions, healthy living programs, pathology/autopsy, basic life support and first aid training.