Residents at Sparrow Hospital receive 600 hours of continuing education on site. Our teaching staff, selected from among the total medical staff, includes private practice physicians and 70 members of the Michigan State University academic medical staff. Sparrow's high standards for medical practitioners attracts an excellent staff who actively participate in educational programs at all levels. Sparrow was first in the State of Michigan to be fully certified for a medical staff continuing education program.

Sparrow is a major affiliate of the Michigan State University College of Human Medicine and College of Osteopathic Medicine. The 70 members of these two colleges who teach at Sparrow participate in daily rounds, conferences, consultations, and other teaching activities with Sparrow's private attending staff. Sparrow Hospital staff members frequently hold clinical appointments at Michigan State University. Residents are eligible for appointments as well.

The Sparrow/MSU Family Medicine Residency Program is a community-based, university-affiliated residency program, which merges the perspectives and resources of a major community hospital and an academic department of Family Medicine. Over fifty percent of the physicians within the Family Medicine Department at Sparrow Hospital are graduates of the Sparrow/MSU Family Medicine Residency Program. MSU's two medical schools place over half their graduates in primary care residencies and employ family physicians as the team physicians for most sports.

Our program, part of a major, regional, full-service community hospital, blends traditional curriculum structure with longitudinal training themes. Within this context, the Family Health Center is considered to be the central focus of training, starting right at the beginning of your first year. We want you to think of your assigned Family Health Center as your home office base, not just a residency clinic where you drop in occasionally to see patients and that takes a back seat to all other rotational experiences. You will have your own assigned panel of patients, and consistent continuity with your patient panel, both inpatient and outpatient, will be a top priority. Learning to be a full-spectrum family physician is a challenge. Multi-tasking is an essential skill to learn. In our program, you'll provide outpatient and inpatient care in much the same way as in a private practice setting, though with some educational modifications.

Goals

Overall, our goal is to train well-rounded family physicians. There's no question that a graduate of the Sparrow/MSU Family Medicine Residency Program will be able to supply excellent comprehensive continuing care to individuals and families, and directly take care of 95 percent of patients who come through the office door. We also feel that it's integral to total care for a physician to act as a health coordinator and patient advocate in the medical care system. You'll find that the residency experience at Sparrow/MSU is a time for uniting the idealism of medical school with the realism of private practice, not sacrificing one for the other. More specifically, the goals of our Residency Program include:

* Supporting personal and family life of our residents.
* Providing an academically excellent education in co-management of health care and promotion.
* Utilizing a competency-based approach to teach, evaluate, and document each residents training experience.
* Offering diverse experiences in a variety of practice situations.
* Promoting an adaptable, imaginative model for continuing medical education.
* Modeling the appropriate use of consultants.
* Fostering high quality, evidence-based, integrated patient care across the full spectrum of family medicine.
* Providing exposure to medical informatics.
* Offering an academic milieu that stimulates scholarly activity.

Objectives

Cognitive
Residents will receive training in the following areas:

* Behavioral science and the family-centered model of care
* Inpatient care of adults and children
* Outpatient care of families throughout the life cycle
* Family-centered maternity care and couplet care of mother and child
* High-risk maternity care
* Evidence based medicine and critical literature review
* Ethics and values in medicine
* Sports medicine
* Occupational health
* Emergency/Urgent care
* Community medicine
* Practice management leading to a successful transition into practice
* Nutrition throughout the life cycle
* Cost-effective care and managing care
* Life long self-learning skills

Procedural
Residents will have the opportunity to become fully competent in performing the following procedures:

Inpatient - arterial puncture, endotracheal intubation, adult and neonatal spinal tap, circumcision, internal jugular or sub-clavian puncture.

Obstetrical - vertex delivery, electronic fetal monitoring and interpretation, episiotomy repair through 4th degree, internal fetal heart rate and uterine pressure monitoring, fetal scalp pH, Prostin induction, Pitocin induction or augmentation, manual removal of placenta, vacuum assisted delivery, low forceps, management of shoulder dystocia.

Outpatient - laceration repair, abscess I&D, diaphragm fitting, skin lesion removal, punch or shave biopsy, tympanometry, endometrial biopsy, IUD placement and removal, Norplant placement and removal, ingrown toenail excision, joint aspiration and injection, EKG reading, cast and splint application, flexible sigmoidoscopy, vasectomy.

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Curriculum
Teaching Methods

This information is reposted with thanks to Sparrow Hospital.