Internal Medicine Residency Program
Faculty Spotlight
Sara Swenson, M.D., Associate Program Director and Associate Director, Adult Medicine
Dr. Swenson graduated from Princeton University and Yale University School of Medicine. She completed her residency in primary care internal medicine at Albert Einstein School of Medicine in the Bronx, New York where she served as Chief Resident in the Residency Program in Social Medicine. In 1998, she joined the Division of General Internal Medicine (DGIM) at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). As a faculty member, she was awarded DGIM’s Credé Awards for Excellence in Clinical Care (2000) and Excellence in Teaching (2002) and the UCSF medical school’s Haile T. Debas Direct Teaching Award (2005). At UCSF, she co-facilitated the Primary Care Residency’s Behavioral Medicine course and taught medical and nursing students, medical residents, and fellows.
While at UCSF, Dr. Swenson also completed a general internal medicine research fellowship and has published in the areas of clinician-patient communication and depression self-management and quality improvement in primary care. She is been active in the Society of General Internal Medicine and the American Academy on Communication in Healthcare and has presented in scientific, clinical, and educational forums at their national meetings.
In 2006, Dr. Swenson joined the Family Health Center at CPMC as an Associate Director and co-facilitator of the residency program’s course in Evidence-Based Medicine. The CPMC residents awarded her the CPMC Teacher of the Year Award in 2008. She currently serves as Associate Program Director and enjoys working with her GME office colleagues and mentoring and teaching the residents. Additional interests include evidence-based medicine, behavioral medicine, quality improvement, and clinician-patient communication.