The Summer Before the Summer

Posted on August 1, 2015 with 0 comments

I’m writing this on the plane from Seattle to Kansas City, on the way to the AAFP’s National Conference for Residents and Medical Students, with Dr. Jose Mata and Tavish Donahue. I’m looking forward to meeting a lot of energetic and curious medical students and talking about our new residency. It is also a magical time in the Northwest, as we are in the midst of a special summer, where it just rained for the first time in 2 months, after a dry spring. For us northwesterners, it is a rare super drought, tough on the forests and fish, great for everyone else.

The mountains and fields are full of flowers and the waters are full of salmon and crabs.

I live on an island, where the sunsets have been glorious and the eagles are everywhere!

The leading edge of a 7 million count salmon run has arrived, so I’ll be on the salt water, wetting a line. The festivals are plentiful, from the recent Seattle Folklife to the Darrington Blue Grass Festival in Snohomish county.
We will receive our accreditation as the newest family medicine residency in the country and in WWAMI, next week. We relish developing a robust CHC based residency, with the first 6 residents joining us next summer, in 2016.
We’re bringing our faculty together, an enthusiastic bunch.  We’re exploring the best teaching methods, like active case-based learning and lots of simulation based training. Providence Regional Medical Center Everett, has a group of residency champions who are working with us developing strong inpatient rotations in their 500 bed hospital. We are their only residency, as well as the only allopathic residency north of Seattle. The medical staff is excited to receive and help our first class of residents.
Our FMPs in Marysville and Everett are strategizing on how we will support the residency to learn best practices and the best ways to teach the medical home model to our residents. Our myriad clinical support services, the heart of a CHC, provide fertile grounds for blossoming residents to spread their wings. We’re remodeling our clinic, putting in a 25 person conference room, as we grow to 18 residents.
This is the “summer before the summer”, a great time for 4th year medical students to explore their residency options. If you have a pioneering spirit with an interest in a CHC with a strong OB and medicine training, check us out.

-Greg Sanders, Program Director