OUTPATIENT CARE

Ambulatory Care Clinic
A weekly outpatient clinic in the Family Health Center is assigned to residents in the three-year Categorical program. Residents serve as their patients' primary care physician throughout the three years of training.

Second- and third-year residents are required to do one month/year purely devoted to ambulatory medicine (OPD). During this time, they practice general medicine and develop competence in a variety of primary care skills including orthopedics, otolaryngology, geriatrics, HIV medicine, rheumatology, allergy, podiatry, travel medicine, etc. Including outpatient-based electives and clinic time during inpatient electives, approximately 33 percent of a resident's time is devoted to ambulatory care. Residents with a particular interest in primary care can use their six to eight months of elective time, their weekly continuity clinic, and scheduled rotations in ambulatory medicine to create an internal medicine three-year experience that is almost 40 percent ambulatory.

In addition to learning clinical outpatient medicine, residents also participate in seminars (during OPD) on Evidence-Based Medicine and Patient Communication taught by CPMC faculty.

Emergency Medicine
A one-month rotation in Emergency Medicine at San Francisco General Hospital is required of all R-I Categorical residents. Additional ER rotations can be done during elective months at San Francisco General or Alameda County (Highland) Hospitals.

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