The present era of increased business and recreational international travel, together with increased immigration due to political and economic instability, mandates competence in global health for Family Physicians. Graduates of the Sioux Falls Family Medicine Residency are equipped to care for the needs of travelers and immigrants, as well as to engage in humanitarian and missionary activity.
Our faculty members include those with both short- and long-term clinical experience on every continent and in domestic wilderness-medicine settings. They have contributed to the medical literature on global health in the topics of refugee health, travel medicine, tropical infectious disease, disaster response, nutrition, and health systems.
Sioux Falls Family Medicine Residency offers many resources and opportunities for global health training. Our city hosts a large immigrant population, including many recent refugees. New immigrants receive their first encounter with the U.S. health system during their new refugee exam at Falls Community Health, one of the sites at which our residents see their patients. Subsequently, many chose to continue their care there, while others seek care at the Center for Family Medicine (the other site where residents and faculty see their continuity patients). Coming from the Balkans, eastern Europe, Horn of Africa, Middle East, Central Asia, or the Himalayas, these newest South Dakotans seek their care with us.
This provides opportunities for cross-cultural care, and presents many clinically interesting tropical diseases to the residents. We have a strong maternity program, and our residents graduate with extensive obstetrical experience. Our required rural rotation provides experience in a limited resource setting, where the Family Physician must manage the wide range of conditions that present. We offer our patients an international travel clinic, in which the residents participate. Rotations abroad are available to residents as elective experiences, and moon-lighting opportunities among Native American populations exist for upper-level residents.
When I moved to Asia after completing residency and a junior faculty position at SFFMR, I felt prepared for all of the variety of experiences and situations I found myself in - ranging from teaching at a family medicine residency in China where I served both ex-patriates and supervised local doctors in caring for children in orphanages, the elderly in nursing homes, and indigent people in the countryside to working in anti-trafficking efforts in Hong Kong, and serving in a short-term capacity across other sites in Asia.
Heather Clouse, MD Associate Program Director