Our residents have a continuity clinic primarily at the Christ Health Center Chalkville location. There are also opportunities to serve at the Woodlawn location in an urban area. These clinics offer residents the opportunity to learn how to provide outstanding care. Residents have a high percentage of continuity patients, so they have the opportunity to build good rapport with their patients over their three years. Residents easily see the ACGME required patient encounter numbers during their training with a diverse patient population including children, adults, and pregnant women. Residents have the opportunity to learn about the business aspects of running our clinic to help ensure they are prepared to be successful in future practices of their own.

The ambulatory care portion of the pediatric curriculum occurs at the Christ Health Center during continuity clinics and with our staff pediatricians during two blocks throughout residency. Also, each resident will receive exposure to various specialized services, including the Alabama Early Intervention System and Speech and Occupational Therapy. Christ Health Center requires one month of outpatient pediatrics for interns and 3rd year, and every resident is provided PALS and NRP certification training.

Christ Health has a strong focus in obstetrics. Our faculty includes 5 family medicine physicians with obstetrics fellowships (FM-OBs). During intern year, residents have two blocks of obstetrics care in both prenatal and postpartum care in clinic and deliveries at St. Vincent’s Birmingham. Interested residents may continue to follow obstetrics patients in their second and third years of residency, gaining sufficient experience to provide low-risk obstetrics care to their patients after graduation. Additionally, there are workshops on episiotomy suturing, ALSO (Advanced Life Support in Obstetrics), and other GYN procedures (colposcopy, excisions, and biopsies) that occur annually.

Our mental health curriculum includes ample opportunity for residents to learn respectful, compassionate care for patients and families. All residents complete a four-week rotation at our Live Oaks Mental Health Clinic, adjacent to Christ Health Center Woodlawn location. The clinic is staffed by a psychiatrist, a team of nurse practitioners/physician assistants, and a social worker. Residents also receive ongoing instruction via specific mental health lecture series curriculum. In their outpatient continuity clinic patient panel, residents have longitudinal instruction in behavioral medicine. Residents become proficient in recognizing, counseling, and treating patients with a wide range of psychosocial and spiritual issues that affect all areas of health.

Our curriculum integrates pharmacy teachings into didactics, a month-long pharmacy/anesthesia rotation with our partner, Samford University Pharmacy School Faculty, our inpatient pharmacists, and our ambulatory pharmacists. Our clinic’s pharmacists can assist with questions and participate directly in patient care with Coumadin Clinic and Diabetic Education and Management. Pharmacy students rotate at our facilities, and they are valued members of our team, assisting with medication reconciliation issues, patient education, and medication recommendations.

All residents work one-on-one with community surgical preceptors during intern year and have opportunities for further electives in 2nd and 3rd year. These rotations include General Surgery, Urology, ENT, Ophthalmology, Orthopedic Surgery, and Dermatology.

At our residency we promote leadership growth as a deliberate aspect of our training. During PGY-2 and PGY-3 years, residents actively serve on a hospital committee. Before graduation, 3rd year residents engage in a leadership summit exploring critical skills such as mentoring, negotiating, advocacy and media relations. Many residents also choose to serve on local foundations and boards in our community as well as within state and national Family Medicine organizations.

The adult inpatient medicine experience occurs solely at St. Vincent’s East Hospital. This rotation consists of four weeks of day inpatient service and four weeks of night inpatient service. Typically, the intern year consists of 3 months of inpatient days and 2 months of inpatient nights, and the upper level (2nd and 3rd years) has 1-2 months of inpatient days and 1 month of inpatient nights. Our inpatient service is unopposed, and there are no other residencies in our facility. The program provides significant autonomy to residents during this rotation. Attending faculty are present in the hospital daily for rounds and remain on-call and accessible 24 hours daily. Our residents are the Code Blue team responsible for the entire hospital. This rotation is considered a notable strength of the program. Patient volume is suitable for excellent exposure to the broad variety of adult illnesses without compromising education or patient safety. We manage all our own patients, including those in the ICU—with or without ventilator management. Our residency aims to provide high-quality, compassionate, evidence-based adult inpatient medicine that is second to none.

As a PGY-2, residents rotate at Children’s of Alabama in downtown Birmingham alongside pediatric residents. The pediatric experience includes a four-week inpatient rotation where the resident acts as a pediatric resident and provides access to many learning opportunities, such as group simulation activities and daily lunch lectures. While at Children’s, residents also get experience working in the pediatric emergency room, a Level 1 Trauma Center, for 4 weeks alongside emergency medicine and pediatric residents.

Through various learning environments and local partnerships, we ensure residents are well prepared to provide outstanding care to the growing geriatric population. During the PGY-2 and PGY-3 years, residents also assume care of two nursing home patients. Additionally, one month is dedicated to a deeper experience exploring hospice, palliative, and geriatric medicine.

Residents work for two weeks at the Andrews Sports Medicine Institute at St. Vincent’s Birmingham campus. Each year, Andrews Sports Medicine Fellows have their outpatient continuity clinic at Christ Health Center, which allows additional time for residents to work with Fellows. If residents are interested in sports medicine, additional opportunities to work at local high schools and collegiate sporting events are available as well as lectures and ultrasound workshops with the Fellows. Through these experiences, residents will be able to establish a relationship with the Sports Medicine program and may apply for fellowship training after graduation as many of our residents have done in the past.

During the intern year, residents spend a focused block rotation in Cardiology. During the second and third years, residents have elective time in some of the following specialties: Gastroenterology, Neurology, Nephrology, Radiology, Infectious Disease, Allergy/Immunology, Hematology/Oncology, Palliative Care Medicine, Endocrinology, and others.

Each resident is permitted 5-6 months of electives, and they can individually tailor their experiences to their specific goals and needs for future practice. If interested, residents can take electives at off-site locations, including domestic and international missions opportunities.

Residents work with local community partners throughout residency, including the Lovelady Center, Positive Choices Pregnancy Center, Jefferson County Health Department, Woodlawn and Huffman High Schools, and M-POWER Ministries Health Clinic. In second year, residents have dedicated time to be immersed in the community and participate in population health projects.