Residency Experience

Core Family Medicine

Family medicine encompasses all ages, all genders, each organ system and every disease entity. As such, we believe that family medicine education cannot be effectively accomplished with only piecemeal rotations in separate specialties of medicine. Instead, we have instituted the longitudinal rotation of Core Family Medicine.

Core Family Medicine is an integrated series of 8 block rotations spread across the three years of residency (4 blocks in first-year and 2 blocks in both second- and third-years). It incorporates elements from the biological, clinical, and behavioral sciences into one rotation with outpatient family medicine clinic as the foundational experience. Our goal is to prepare you in a practical way for future practice as a family physician.

Core Family Medicine includes the following curricular topics which will build throughout your three years:

Ambulatory Family Medicine

  • As the primary focus of Core FM rotations, you will focus on developing skills needed to provide optimal primary health care in the outpatient setting.
  • Every block of Core Family Medicine is built on a foundation of 1 full-week of your own outpatient primary care clinic, in addition to your regularly scheduled clinics that occur throughout the year.

Addiction Medicine

  • You will learn to prescribe MOUD (Medications for Opiate Use Disorder) including Buprenorphine.
  • You will gain experience treating patients struggling with addiction by working side-by-side with medical and behavioral health clinicians in a team-based, multidisciplinary clinic.
  • You will learn to work collaboratively with addiction treatment providers in the community.

Community Medicine

  • In addition to becoming familiar with resources available to our patients, you will develop the skills to perform your own community needs assessment.

Counseling Skills / Motivational Interviewing

  • You will have opportunities to shadow, practice, and provide counseling treatments in conjunction with other family medicine treatments alongside our fully integrated behavioral health clinicians. You will study and develop Motivational Interviewing skills. You will also gain in-depth knowledge of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and begin to practice basic CBT skills in your own outpatient clinic.

Critical Care (ICU)

  • In addition to caring for critically ill patients while on the hospital teaching service, residents will have a 1-week intensive in the ICU, working directly with intensive care specialists.

Cross-Cultural Medicine

  • You will learn skills to communicate more effectively with patients and families from diverse cultural backgrounds.
  • You will learn skills to recognize the impact of your own inherent biases on the medical encounter and how to strive for an attitude of cultural humility.

Dermatology

  • You will have the opportunity to care for your own patients’ dermatologic concerns, in addition to participating in a procedure clinic with the opportunity for biopsy and removal of various skin lesions.
  • You will also have a 1-week intensive in a dermatology clinic working with a specialist, in addition to completion of American Academy of Dermatology modules to improve your pattern recognition.

Journal Club

  • As part of your scholarly activity in residency, you will learn how to assess, interpret, and apply a journal article to your own practice, as well as how to share that information with your colleagues.

Laboratory Medicine

  • You will become knowledgeable in the pre-analytical, analytical, and post-analytical processes in the physician’s office lab, become more comfortable with the collection of specimens for basic labs, and learn how to order, interpret, and notify patients of laboratory results.

Mental Healthcare / Psychiatry

  • Family Medicine physicians are mental healthcare providers; hence, you will spend time in clinic with supervision and feedback from psychiatrists, therapists, and other behavioral health clinicians treating patients with mental health concerns. You will do this in your own outpatient clinic, and also at behavioral health treatment centers in Sioux Falls to help learn of collaborating services’ resources and hone your skills.

Neurology

  • You will have a 1-week intensive working with a neurologist to learn to perform a thorough neurological examination and develop a differential for problems that commonly present to a family medicine clinic.

Nutrition

  • Proper nutrition has many health benefits and is part of the education we provide patients for both preventative health and chronic disease management. You will learn skills and available resources to better guide your patients as they are making nutrition decisions.

Parahealth Therapies (PT, OT, etc.)

  • Physicians cannot provide adequate healthcare in a silo and require a team to provide optimal care of patients. You will have exposure to a few of the parahealth therapies that help take care of our patients.

Population Health

  • While looking at your own patient panel, you will learn to discuss chronic and preventative care and identify ways to positively impact your patients’ health, as well as developing the skills to improve your delivery of healthcare through quality improvement projects.

Practice Management

  • You will develop an understanding of the elements of the ever-changing medical management environment by learning about the primary care operational models, ways to build a health care team and improve workflow, and how to review a budget and financial statement.

Radiology / POCUS

  • Through a series of hands-on workshops throughout residency, as well as use in your own clinical practice, you will increase your POCUS skills. You will also be assigned learning modules to practice your pattern recognition within radiology that is commonly used in a family medicine clinic.

Sexual Health

  • You will have interactive workshop discussions led by our own faculty members to learn the current recommendations for screening, testing, and treatment of sexually-transmitted infections. You will also engage in workshops to learn and discuss how family physicians can care for those in the LGBTQ+ community.

Surgery

  • In addition to caring for pre- and post-operative surgical patients in both the inpatient and primary care setting, you will work directly with a surgeon in their clinic to increase the skills that you can bring to your family practice.