Curriculum

Family Medicine Residency Program Details

Residents complete their outpatient training with PrimeCare Community Health, a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) serving under-resourced northwest-side Chicago communities since 1992. Recognized by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) as a Health Center Quality Leader Gold in 2023, PrimeCare ranks among the top 9% of Community Health Centers nationwide and is acknowledged as a Health Disparities Reducer, addressing social risk factors and enhancing access to care. Residents will have the opportunity to bridge healthcare gaps, work towards ensuring equitable access to top-notch medical care, and directly improving the lives of individuals and families. At the beginning of residency, residents choose from one of our continuity clinic sites: PrimeCare Wicker Park practice on South Campus, or the PrimeCare West Town practice on North Campus.

Although most rotations take place at the Prime Healthcare Saint Mary of Nazareth Hospital – Chicago campus, residents have several rotations at locations throughout the city and surrounding suburbs.

Program Instruction and Didactics

The formal instructional portion of the curriculum takes place on an ongoing basis throughout residency. The centerpiece is a series of didactic conferences that convene three times per week from 12:15–1:15 pm in the Medical Center’s Residency Conference Room. These midday conferences tend to focus on ambulatory issues and practice management skills.

 In addition, the residents on the Family Medicine Service attend a weekly team-teaching session that highlights important diagnostic and management issues in recently admitted patients and develops clinical reasoning skills in Internal Medicine.

Each day, residents on the Maternal Child Health and Neonatology services review Maternal-Child health topics that highlight important diagnostic and management issues in recently admitted obstetrical or pediatric patients and develop clinical reasoning skills unique to these areas. Program faculty and residents lead or moderate most morning or noon sessions but also draw on the expertise of specialists practicing at the Medical Center, as well as a wide range of faculty from the Chicago area’s seven medical schools.

In accordance with the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) and ACGME guidelines, our curriculum also includes continuing medical education (CME) seminars with visiting medical staff. Hospital-wide CME conferences take place every Tuesday and Wednesday at noon. 

In addition to clinical and conference attendance responsibilities, each resident is provided with and expected to complete a monthly reading and self-assessment program (including clinical simulations in selected areas as they become available) throughout the course of their residency training. Comprised of up-to-date, evidence-based learning modules from the AAFP, American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM) and other authoritative sources, these elements are keyed to the resident’s current rotation to ensure the timeliness and relevance of the material. This component of the residency is designed to ensure that each resident 1) becomes well-grounded in the medical knowledge competencies covering the breadth of Family Medicine, and 2) is guided to assume primary responsibility and a continuing commitment to their own lifelong learning process.

All residents are certified in BLS, ACLS, PALS, ALSO, and NRP throughout the course of their training.

Finally, reflecting the missions of Saint Mary of Nazareth Hospital – Chicago and its affiliated health centers, the program provides residents with many opportunities to serve the community outside of the scope of the traditional inpatient and outpatient medical care settings. The residency’s robust community medicine curriculum offers residents the opportunity to learn and employ public health concepts as residents complete a community assessment in our primary service area, gain experience providing care to homeless and incarcerated populations, and increase their neighborhood involvement by providing health talks at local community-based organizations and schools.