Deciding where to interview and eventually match can be very difficult decisions! There are lots of exceptional family medicine residencies to choose from, so the choice can be overwhelming. We wanted to provide some answers to frequently asked questions that will hopefully help you in deciding if we are the right program for you.
What are your strengths?
The people! From the residents, to the clinic staff, to our faculty and beyond—this is a warm and friendly environment where we are focused on providing exceptional care to patients while also creating a supportive learning environment. Our ambulatory training is very strong—our graduates spend significant time in their continuity clinic building relationships with their patients. We very commonly hear from new graduates in outpatient practice how grateful they are for the training they received as they are well prepared for new careers. We are also very strong in hospital medicine as our inpatient service sees a variety of pathologies in a high-volume hospital and many of our residents chose to do additional inpatient medicine shifts as seniors (moonlighting). Our sports medicine and pediatric curricula are both very strong as well.
How do residents receive feedback?
Please do not feel obligated to communicate with us after your interview! We are always here to answer any questions that might come up, but communicating with us does not in impact where we rank people. We understand this is a busy time with lots of interviewing going on while still trying to finish medical school, so we don’t expect communication.
What are your weaknesses?
While we provide a quality experience in OB, we are not considered a “heavy” OB program. Our goal is that all of our graduates are comfortable in prenatal and postpartum care and those who are more interested in OB spending elective time to gain more experience. The number of required deliveries for each resident is 20. We do not routinely provide surgical obstetric training. Another possible limitation in training in OMT. Unfortunately, we do not currently have any DO faculty within our residency program, so we do not provide training/supervision for OMT procedures.
What do most residents do after graduation?
We usually have a couple residents who chose to be hospitalists each year, maybe 1-2 who pursue a sports medicine fellowship, and the rest generally chose outpatient practice. We’ve had graduates pursue palliative care fellowships while others considered integrative medicine, OB, and research fellowships. Geographically, our residents go all over to practice—rural communities to big cities as well as all over the US and into Canada. It’s not uncommon for residents to stay in Gainesville and even join our department to focus on an academic career. We really try to provide broad training to prepare our graduates for just about anything!
What’s didactics like?
We have protected time on Wednesday afternoons for didactics at our clinic. We try to ensure the core topics seen in family medicine are covered in an 18-month curriculum, so each resident has a chance to hear the topic twice while here. Core topics are generally covered by either our core residency faculty or faculty from other specialties at UF. We also incorporate some didactic time at the simulation center on campus at UF. During these half days, residents practice ultrasound skills as well as simulation cases as a team. Throughout the year we also have group sessions on ethics as well as Balint. Residents provide peer teaching through their M&M presentations, journal clubs, peer teaching topics, and board reviews. And lastly, we also incorporate our scholars time into didactics to cover research topics as well as provide time for residents to work on their projects!
What procedures do your residents learn?
We place a greater emphasis on outpatient office-based procedures as these are what the majority of family medicine graduates report doing in their practices. That includes things like skin biopsies (excisional, punch, shave), joint injections, I&Ds, casting/splinting, cryotherapy, suturing, IUDs, circumcision, nexplanon, colposcopies, podiatry, etc. If residents are interested in more hospital-based procedures (central lines, etc), then we suggest using some elective time on rotations to get more experience.
What procedures are NOT an option at your program?
We don’t provide training in surgical obstetrics, colonoscopies, or EGDs. Unfortunately, we do not currently have any DO residency faculty, so most of the OMT procedures aren’t an option. If there is something you are really interested in doing that we haven’t mentioned, feel free to reach out and ask us about it. We understand we aren’t a perfect fit for everyone, so we want to ensure our program can meet your career and educational needs.