Curriculum

SFPC residents have opportunities to meet and learn from SFPC graduates about their career journeys. Through the career series, residents have the opportunity to learn about careers in a variety of settings beyond academic medicine including rural medicine, primary care at Federally Qualified Health Centers, organizational leadership jobs, policy and advocacy work, and incarceration medicine.

This curriculum focuses on the care of patients with female reproductive organs. Sessions employ an interactive Team-Based Learning model to teach about contraception, abortion, abnormal uterine bleeding, urinary incontinence and menopause. The curriculum also includes a four-hour workshop led by family planning specialists specifically focused on the skills needed for internists to provide medication abortion services. 

This two-year curriculum for SFPC second- and third-year residents focuses on identifying areas for improvement in clinical systems and learning to implement change. Using A3 Thinking and Human Centered Design frameworks, residents develop a QI project addressing an operational, quality, or patient safety problem in clinic. Population health management activities are used to demonstrate an approach to clinical healthcare disparities. In their R3 year, residents learn to approach medical errors and patient harm from a systems standpoint as they apply this framework to an ambulatory M&M. 

Writing the Wrongs: Facilitated by Ashley McMullen, host of Black Voices in Healthcare podcast series, Narrative Medicine involves the practice of narrative competency, or the "ability to acknowledge, absorb, interpret, and act on the stories or plights of others." COVID-19 has made readily apparent the consequences of an inequitable healthcare system. While it is important for us as providers to advocate publicly for vulnerable patients, we must also create safe spaces to internally reflect on our own blind spots and strengthen community/accountability among our colleagues. The goal of this curriculum is to use stories and narrative competency to gain proximity to those whose identities and experiences may differ widely from our own and to improve the care that we provide across differences. We may have all the knowledge and facts about health disparities, but stories stick with us in ways that can empower lasting change. 

In the primary care transformation curriculum, residents will learn the principles of high-performing primary care using the 10 building blocks model. Primary care transformation has improved quality of care, efficiency, and patient satisfaction across practices nationwide. Through interactive multidisciplinary sessions, residents will apply the building blocks to opportunities to strengthen team-based care and population management in their continuity clinic practice at the Richard Fine People's Clinic. 

Resident Wellness Group meets monthly for residents on block. It provides a safe, confidential space for residents to reflect on their experiences, support each other, and learn from the collective wisdom of the group. We use techniques like reflective writing to process the many emotions that accompany the residency experience, and we practice simple stress reduction methods. Resident Wellness Group is supplemented by 1:1 emotional office hours, whereby residents can sign up for an individual conversation with Beth about topics ranging from work/life balance to career decisions to individual patient cases and their effect on our well-being.