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Fox Valley Curriculum

Our curriculum trains residents in the full depth and breadth of family medicine, offering the greatest career flexibility after residency.

On this page:

Obstetrics

  • Two-month rotations in both the first and second year
  • High-volume labor and delivery unit (120-250 deliveries per resident)
  • Experiences include pre-term labor management, labor induction and augmentation, diagnosis and management of third trimester emergencies and complications, and cesarean section assistance
  • Electives in fertility, high-risk, and operative obstetrics
  • Night float system in place
  • NICU on site

Medicine

  • Work as a team with hospitalists and community faculty on inpatient medicine service
  • Procedures include central lines, arterial lines, chest tubes, lumbar punctures, thoracentesis, paracentesis, and endotracheal intubation
  • Continuity experience with the resident's own patients and Family Medicine Center patients
  • Night float system in place
  • Collaborative Care experience

Geriatrics

  • Well-developed, integrated office and hospital curriculum with enthusiastic role model faculty
  • Clinic population includes good mix of healthy elderly and those with chronic disease
  • Long-term care geriatrics rotation in a state-of-the-art nursing home teaches skills in geriatric and internal medicine, palliative care, and rehabilitative care

Pediatrics

  • Focus on state-of-the-art outpatient care: prevention, management of chronic illness, and skillful response to acute illness to minimize hospitalization
  • Three months of inpatient service includes care of hospitalized infants and children and work in the busy on-call pediatrician's office
  • Nursery care experience includes on-site NICU at St. Elizabeth Hospital
  • High-volume circumcision experience
  • Outstanding, collegial pediatrician role models and UW consultants and outreach specialty clinics
  • Additional required pediatric selective month
  • Elective experience at new Fox Valley Children's Hospital.

Community Medicine / Behavior Science / Practice Management

These three curricula are interwoven into a longitudinal curriculum, which enhances and integrates learning.

  • School system involvement includes teaching sex-education classes, running smoking-cessation courses, and providing "shadow-the-doc" experiences
  • Opportunities to counsel patients and use critical community resources, such as AIDS resource centers, sexual assault crisis centers, domestic violence emergency centers, and rehabilitation programs
  • Behavioral medicine experiences include counseling techniques, substance and alcohol abuse resources
  • Broad practice management and CQI curriculum

Procedure Experience

  • Procedures include colonoscopy, colposcopy, vasectomy, and EGD
  • Hands-on procedure workshops throughout the year, including a casting and splinting workshop
  • Biweekly outpatient "procedure" clinic focusing on minor procedures (biopsies, ingrown toenail removal, sebaceous cyst excisions, aspirations, injections), followed by outcomes review
  • High graduate satisfaction with skills in variety of inpatient and outpatient procedures

Allopathic and Osteopathic Curriculum

  • Continuity experience in allopathic and osteopathic medicine with dual accreditation program
  • Osteopathic manipulation treatment room and clinics
  • Community preceptorships in osteopathic manipulative medicine

Resident Support

Adequate preparation for the practice of family medicine requires periods of rigorous work in the hospital and clinic. However, staying emotionally healthy requires a balance between work and play, and a support system to help maintain a positive outlook.

A balanced and fair call schedule is essential to resident well-being, as are the following services and functions:

  • Program orientation: Includes ACLS, NRP and ALSO training, introduction to the clinic and program, and social events, such as a day-long class canoe trip and a clinic-wide annual picnic.
  • Annual weekend retreat: An off-site weekend, planned by residents, to encourage relaxation, recreation, and personal growth for residents and their families/significant others. Faculty physicians assume call responsibilities and release residents from other duties.
  • Balint group: Monthly gathering of resident and faculty physicians, facilitated by program psychologist, featuring discussions of challenging medical and life situations.
  • Monthly resident forum: Opportunity for residents to discuss issues without faculty, thereby encouraging private open dialogue and problem-solving.
  • Monthly resident-faculty "rap": Opportunity for residents and faculty to candidly discuss concerns and engage in mutual problem-solving and support.
  • Annual social event with volunteer community faculty.
  • Tuesday afternoon conferences. Lectures and seminars covering the gamut of medical, behavioral, practice management, procedural, and other curriculum categories.
  • Advisor-advisee and class meetings.