Residency

The Residency Program in Social Medicine (RPSM) at Montefiore Medical Center began in 1970.  The founders saw that traditional programs were not adequately training physicians in the fields of ambulatory and community medicine. In an effort to fill this gap, they developed a new type of program based upon four components:

1. In-hospital experiences at Montefiore Medical Center and affiliated hospitals.
2. Ambulatory care experience as a member of a health care team in a community-based health center located in an underserved neighborhood of the Bronx.
3. A broad curriculum covering often ignored areas such as individual, family, and community health care; behavioral and social sciences; and medical ethics.
4. Self-development experience for residents in directing their professional learning by participation in program management.

Goals of the Program

Our residency program is designed to provide training in the following areas:

Personal Health Services

To develop the problem-solving skills necessary to provide comprehensive, continuous primary care services.

• Clinical Skills: To apply an evidence-based approach to diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation, as well as current principles of health promotion, disease prevention, and patient education to the management of health problems.
• Behavioral Skills: To become proficient in the medical interview and develop the ability to make accurate and effective psychosocial assessments, interventions, and referrals for individuals and families.
• Team Skills: To function effectively in delivering comprehensive care as a member of an  interdisciplinary health team.
• Advocacy Skills: To secure needed services for patients while empowering them to be effective advocates for themselves.

Community Health Care

To promote the skills necessary to work with communities and defined populations in identifying problems and developing, managing, and changing health care programs and institutions to solve them.

• Health System Skills: To analyze and affect the complex factors related to planning, organizing, financing, and managing health systems, including both ambulatory and hospital-based care.
• Community and Organizational Skills: To understand cultural, economic, and political factors related to community power structure, decision-making, and economic development, in order to promote health.
• Research and Evaluation Skills: To evaluate the quality and effects of health care and to assess epidemiologic research in community-oriented primary care.
• Educational and Teaching Skills: To learn to teach ourselves, our patients, and our colleagues.

Leadership Development

To promote the habits and skills necessary for continuing self-education and professional development.

• Self-development: To set career and personal goals and determine how to reach them.
• Values Clarification: To understand conflicting values and to explore these within the context of cultural diversity, medical ethics, and interdisciplinary teams.
• Residency Program Management: To collaborate in planning of RPSM goals and objectives, to share the responsibilities of its operation and management, and to engage in its on-going evaluation.
• Leadership Skills: To provide opportunities to develop administrative, grant-writing, and advocacy skills for social change.

Part of our task is to continually reassess these goals and our progress toward them. Our aim is a flexible program, suited to individual needs within certain guidelines. What each individual accomplishes and the degree of flexibility and freedom she or he may exercise depends upon individual initiative, accountability and assumption of responsibility.

Faculty

The clinical faculty of the Residency Program in Social Medicine have full-time attending status at Montefiore Medical Center and are members of the faculty of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. In addition, RPSM residents are taught by the attending staff of all departments of the Medical Center. Each specialty has full-time physician faculty complemented by behavioral science faculty, social medicine faculty, and the members of the DFM's Divison of Research.