USC/California Hospital
Family Medicine Residency

Longitudinal Curricula

Behavioral Sciences:
Our Clinical Psychologist, Dr. Anthony Zamudio supervises the training of the residents in the Behavioral Sciences by providing one-on one supervision of patient contacts, videotape review, home visits and didactic sessions. Activities are planned for all three years of the residency including components within the introduction to Family Practice Center/Community Medicine rotation and a 2-week rotation in Chemical Dependency in the first year. Second year residents complete a month-long Psychiatry rotation in the Psychiatric Emergency Room and a 2-week block on Human Behavior working directly with Dr. Zamudio.

Geriatrics:
In addition to the continuity care experience of nursing home patients during the second and third year, a 4-week block geriatric rotation provides residents with patient experience in various settings: outpatient – through the USC-FPC and in adult day health centers, in-patient – through CHMC, nursing homes, and home visits.  Residents also participate in team meetings with the palliative care service at CHMC and with a local hospice group, and with CHMC Bio-ethics Committee meetings.  The longitudinal curriculum also incorporates geriatric topics during noon lectures and journal club presentations.  Nursing home visits involve multi-disciplinary team management.  All activities are supervised by the family medicine faculty.

Practice Management:
The Practice Management curriculum is taught throughout the three years of the residency program. We have developed a longitudinal curriculum in "Managing Care", which is designed to equip resident learners to be expert managers of care in the rapidly changing US health care delivery environment. The curriculum design emphasizes experiential learning in the context of day to day patient care. The experiential curriculum is built upon a foundation of monthly 90-minute didactic/discussion sessions covering more than a dozen topics such as Medical Informatics, Evidence-Based Medicine, The Business of Medicine, Continuous Performance Improvement, and many others. Residents also participate in our monthly Family Health Center Practice Meeting, in which clinic finance, provider profiles, and clinical strategies are discussed. Individual mentoring in CV preparation, career counseling, and contract evaluation are provided by the clinical faculty.

Family Medicine Conferences:
A schedule of conferences that addresses all areas of curriculum is held in the USC Family Practice Center conference room, and the Soiland Library. These didactic conferences include noon lectures, workshops and Friday morning Family Medicine conferences.  Specific resident presentations as part of the residency’s Scholarly Activities and Research Curriculum include Medicine Grand Rounds, Evidence-Based Medicine projects, Psycho-Social Case Conferences, Clinic Resident Quality Improvement projects and Journal Club.  

Additionally, we conduct family medicine board review questions sessions with the residents on Mondays at noon.  Friday workshops are scheduled on a monthly basis to address  X-ray Interpretation, EKG Interpretation, Common Office Procedures, and Death and Dying,  as examples of other more lengthy patient care topics.