Volume 3 • Issue 1 • 1000197 J Community Med Health Educ ISSN: 2161-0711 JCMHE, an open access journal Community Medicine & Health Education Gimpel et al., J Community Med Health Educ 2013, 3:1 http://dx.doi.org/10.4172/2161-0711.1000197 Research Article Open Access Family Medicine Resident Education: An Innovative Model of Community Medicine Training Nora Gimpel 1 , Patti Pagels 1 , Vibin Roy 1 , Zoe Tullius 2 and Tiffany Billmeier Kindratt 1 * 1 Department of Family and Community Medicine, UT Southwestern Medical Center, USA 2 Department of Pediatrics, Northwestern University, Hospital of Chicago, USA Abstract Introduction: Family Medicine residents benefit from comprehensive training models which incorporate community medicine and population health principles into patient care. This paper describes an innovative Community Medicine (CM) rotation and reports its effectiveness. Objectives of the rotation are to train residents to 1) identify and intervene in community health problems, 2) respond to particular health issues and care for local cultural groups, 3) coordinate local community health resources in the care of patients, 4) focus on underserved population and 5) assimilate into the community and its organizations. Method: Residents (N=21) participated in a longitudinal CM rotation that included 8 weeks (2 blocks) in the first year and 4 weeks (1 block each) in second and third years. Resident activities included several community agency site visits, health education, journal clubs, didactics, community-based participatory research (CBPR) and direct patient care. Selected residents (2 per year) participated in a targeted community action research experience (CARE). Residents completed a pre-test evaluating their knowledge and attitudes of CM (1=strongly disagree; 5=strongly agree). After the rotation, residents completed a post-test and rated their perceptions of whether the curriculum goals were accomplished (1=not accomplished; 5=accomplished). Results: Residents’ knowledge and attitudes improved significantly on most areas of Community Medicine (CM) (p<0.05). All residents reported that the CM rotation increased their knowledge of health promotion activities (5.00). Residents also felt strongly about their ability to locate community resources of benefit to their patients (4.87), care for patients in non-traditional sites (4.86) and assimilate into the community after graduation (4.81). Conclusion: Residents evaluated the CM rotation favorably. Our rotation is a comprehensive model that can be used by other residencies to train community responsive physicians and meet ACGME guidelines. Rotation activities can be tailored to the specific needs of other residencies and their communities. *Corresponding author: Tiffany Billmeier Kindratt, MPH, Research Study Coordinator, Department of Family and Community Medicine, UT Southwestern Medical Center, 5920 Forest Park Rd, Dallas, TX 75390-9165, Tel: 214-648-7096; Fax: 214-353-0604; E-mail: tiffany.kindratt@utsouthwestern.edu Received January 30, 2013; Accepted February 20, 2013; Published February 22, 2013 Citation: Gimpel N, Pagels P, Roy V, Tullius Z, Kindratt TB (2013) Family Medicine Resident Education: An Innovative Model of Community Medicine Training. J Community Med Health Educ 3: 197. doi:10.4172/2161-0711.1000197 Copyright: © 2013 Gimpel N, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Keywords: Community medicine; Family medicine; Training; Residency Introduction Family Medicine (FM) resident education needs innovative training models to demonstrate the importance of Community Medicine (CM) and population health training in residency education. At all levels of training and practice, population- and community- based approaches allow clinicians to examine their quality of care for a specific patient population, make changes in their own system of care and study how these changes affect their practice [1]. e Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) requires that FM residents receive a structured curriculum in CM which includes didactic and experiential activities in topics such as abuse, school health, communicable disease reporting, epidemiology, disaster responsiveness and the development and use of community resources to address social determinants of health [2]. ese competencies in CM can be met by mastering the following four domains: 1) participation in health activities in the community; 2) sociocultural awareness in care of patients; 3) utilization of the community’s health resources and 4) community participation and assimilation [3]. Family Medicine (FM) residencies across the United States (US) fulfill the Community Medicine (CM) requirements in various ways. Several existing programs use a Community-Oriented Primary Care (COPC) model [4] while others offer a global approach by working with various community partners to target a variety of health concerns [5,6]. Some residencies offer training in community health centers [7], other programs use concentrated CM experiences while others extend their training and offer related degrees (i.e. MPH or MBA) [8]. Most programs have experiences with underserved populations but very few formalized relationships exist between community organizations and educational institutions [3-9]. Few programs utilize longitudinal curriculums while others use block rotations [10-12]. In 2002, Plescia et al. found 89% of FM programs had formal curricula in place to teach CM yet only 24% reported more than one month exclusively dedicated to the CM components [3]. Minimal research describing and evaluating comprehensive longitudinal CM curriculums for FM residents has been published since this assessment. Fisher (2003) described a comprehensive curriculum which combined both an annual block and a semi-longitudinal approach to teaching CM but training did not begin until the second year [11]. To address these training deficits, we designed a novel Community Medicine (CM) curriculum for Family Medicine (FM) residents. Our rotation incorporates annual concentrated block experiences within a longitudinal curriculum that spans the three-year residency. e purpose of the CM rotation is to train residents to 1) identify and intervene in the community’s health problems, 2) respond to particular health issues of local cultural groups and care for them, 3) coordinate