Program Goals

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 cultural competence and 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.
• Collaboration in Residency Program Management
  To collaborate in planning of RPSM goals and objectives, and implementation, 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.