ADVANCED RURAL-GLOBAL MEDICAL & SURGICAL RESIDENT TRAINING TRACK

Introduction and Objective: Family medicine physicians that perform more procedures and surgeries in their practice provide higher quality and less costly medical care and are well poised to help fill the growing global burden of unmet surgical and medical needs. However, few family medicine residency training programs offer the full breadth of procedural training that would meet the needs of the rural and globally underserved. This program aims to prepare full spectrum family medicine physicians to provide essential medical and surgical services in low-resource settings around the world. Method: Development of a surgical track divided over PGY-3 and PGY-4 years of a full spectrum family medicine residency program. Surgical patients are referred and track residents will learn to take care of these patients by working with general and specialty surgeons both inside and outside of the operating room. Curriculum will also include weekly didactics and general family medicine procedural training. At the midpoint and end of their training, residents will be evaluated by surgical faculty via a modification of the instrument used to assess general surgery residents. Results and Conclusion: Data collected will be analyzed to assess preparation of residents in the ARMS track for a narrow breadth of surgical skills to use in rural and international settings. After completion of the surgical track, residents will be experienced in various general surgery, orthopedic surgery, urology, ob/gyn, and ultrasound procedures necessary in resource-poor areas.