Residency Programs

Hanford Family Practice Residency

Longitudinal Curriculum

The Hanford Family Practice Residency has a longitudinal curriculum. The ACGME encourages this type of curriculum in primary care residency programs; however, most programs base their curriculum on a traditional "block rotation" system.

The Hanford Family Practice Residency curriculum mirrors and matches the residency experience with the practice of Family Medicine post residency while providing a robust educational environment. The resident is no longer confined to a certain "block" within a certain year to obtain competency in a specific field of advanced training as would be the case in a "block" curriculum. Our longitudinal curriculum releases the resident to more naturally develop commensurately with their PGY 1, 2, 3 status.

You will rotate through the Family Medicine Center, specialties and subspecialties clinics and daily inpatient and ICU unit rounds throughout your 2.5 years in our program. "How is this possible?" you probably are asking.

Hanford Family Practice Residency is part of a Rural Health Clinic system that is projected to see approximately 350,000 patient encounters a year. These patients are seen in multiple Rural Health Clinics throughout the hospital service area. Because of the size of this Rural Health Clinic system, Central Valley General Hospital has developed a specialty clinic that is the referral source from the primary care clinics for specialty care. This specialty clinic is located in the same building as our residency, but separate.

On a daily basis, the specialty clinic has morning and afternoon half day sessions in which various board-certified specialists examine patients along with our residents. The specialty clinic staff and specialists are aware of the residents' PGY status and will incorporate them commensurately into patient care according to your PGY status.

For example, if the resident is a PGY2 participating in one of the surgical specialty clinics and a surgical case presents itself, the resident will do the preoperative clearance, H&P and orders; will be the first assistant in the surgery since this is an unopposed residency; will perform daily postoperative care; will discharge the patient; and will see the patient in a future follow-up appointment in the surgical specialty clinic. If the patient has no family physician, the patient can be transferred to the resident patient panel.

This is but one of several ways that our program is "longitudinally" connecting the resident to patient care based on their PGY year of training.

The strength of the curriculum is in part reflected in the In-Training Exams average scores above the 70th percentile and 100% Specialty Boards passage.

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