Curriculum
Social Medicine Curriculum
One month of each year of residency is devoted to teaching social medicine. During these months residents from each class are released from primary hospital responsibilities and come together to learn foundational topics in social medicine.
Social Medicine Immersion Month: As interns, our trainees participate in an intensive Social Medicine Immersion Month which orients them to the theory and practice of social medicine. Interns work directly with faculty and one another to explore various topics, including application of the biopsychosocial model in clinical practice, fundamentals of physician-patient relations, and advocating for patent rights, among others. An introduction to the colorful history of the Bronx and the many cultural communities that make up its fabric are also emphasized. Residents frequently draw on the skills acquired during this month throughout their training
Information Mastery for Social Medicine: Residents again come together as a group in their second year to review fundamental principles of epidemiology, biostatistics, and evidence-based medicine as they apply to community oriented primary care
Health Systems: In residents’ 3rd year, they take part in formal teaching seminars that delineate the complexities of the current health care system. Emphasis on patent advocacy and navigation of health systems prepare residents for the practice of primary care medicine upon graduation.
Social Medicine Project
All residents are required to plan and execute a project drawing upon the skills obtained during their training. The projects can be conducted alone or in groups and are expected to span across the three years of residency. Projects can be designed around education, research, or advocacy. Projects are presented at the close of the PGY-3 year to Montefiore faculty and residents. Residents often go on to publish and more formally present their work. The subject and scope of projects is limited only by residents’ imagination, and many projects continue to remain in practice and evolve even after the resident has graduated.
- Examples of SM projects
- Decarceration Medical Record Review
- PrEP Prescribing in Patents at High Risk of Acquiring HIV
- Understanding Trauma and its Intersectionality within the Homeless Population
- Redesigning Home Physical Therapy: a Home PT Regimen for Rotator Cuff Tendinopathy
- Patent Experiences with Contraceptive Care at an FQHC in the South Bronx: A Survey-Based Assessment
- Re-grounding Family-Centered Perinatal Care at Two Bronx Clinics
- Re-imagining Medical Spanish Education to Care for LatinX Patents
- Expanding Universal Screening of Social Determinants of Health
Social Medicine Rounds
The Department of Family and Social Medicine hosts twice monthly lectures, workshops, or seminars addressing the larger context of medicine and health. These rounds address issues of public health, international medicine, political activism, cultural competence, and more. They are led by experts available in the New York metropolitan area, or those of national renown. You can see examples of recent Social Medicine Rounds and sign up to attend the next rounds here.
Find out more about our social medicine curriculum here.
Behavioral Health Curriculum
Fundamental to our residents’ training is the application of an integrated biopsychosocial approach to healthcare that recognizes the importance of understanding medical problems from an individual, familial, and community perspective. Unique to our curriculum is the attention given to the patient’s family and social context when addressing problems at the clinical encounter. We promote a family systems model, understood as the best way to apply a biopsychosocial perspective to clinical practice. The psychosocial curriculum at RPSM is integrated throughout the 3 years of training through the following major components:
- Psychosocial Precepting: Trained psychologists, working as psychosocial preceptors, are in clinic during most resident clinic sessions to assist residents to better identify and address patents’ psychosocial issues as they arise. Preceptors work collaboratively with medical preceptors in a co-precepting model and offer expertise in patent assessment, doctor-patient relationship issues as well as intervention planning. In addition, preceptors are available to conduct on-going counseling with particularly complex patents in conjunction with the primary care resident
- Observation of Medical Encounters: Throughout the 3 years of residency, residents are observed by the behavioral faculty by sitting in during encounters with patents and later reviewing the patent encounters. These conjoint review sessions provide residents with an essential training in conducting effective, efficient, and culturally sensitive patent interviews.
- Psychosocial Seminars and Lectures: Once a month during Tuesday afternoon didactics, residents present a particularly challenging or poignant clinical case in collaboration with the psychosocial faculty focusing on themes particularly relevant to primary care practice. The aim of the seminar is to teach the integration of the psychosocial, biomedical, and social medicine approaches to the medical encounter as well as to provide a forum in which the residents can share and reflect on their clinical experiences. In addition, residents learn how to assess and manage common clinical problems presented in primary care practice. In addition to these seminars, psychosocial faculty regularly lecture on important psychosocial topics during Tuesday afternoon didactics
Psychosocial Leadership
- Tanya White Davis, PsyD
Director of Primary Care Behavioral Health - Chantal “Remi” Sowemimo-Coker, PhD
Senior Psychosocial Faculty
Rotations and Electives
Continuity Clinic
- Williamsbridge Family Practice Center is a FQHC constructed in 1996 and the continuity clinic site for both residents and faculty. The center is in a mixed-residential and commercial area in the Northeast Bronx, ten minutes from Montefiore Medical Center. As a FQHC, Williamsbridge is committed to providing care for patients regardless of their insurance, socioeconomic status, or ability to pay for care. The center serves a culturally diverse community. The staff is culturally diverse as well, reflective of the community that it serves. The providers at Williamsbridge includes faculty with expertise in sports medicine, reproductive health, maternity care, addiction medicine, HIV care, research, palliative care and practice management. The center has several ongoing quality improvement projects. There is a strong commitment to improving the way services are provided to patents by actively incorporating evidence-based medicine in patent management and treatment.
- Residents’ continuity clinic represents the backbone of their residency training. Residents will be the assigned PCP for a panel of patients starting from the first day of residency. Residents’ panel size and clinic schedule will grow during each year of residency as residents gain more comfort in their skills as a PCP. Highlights of Williamsbridge clinic include:
- Continuity prenatal care: Residents will take care of prenatal patients within their continuity clinic, attend the deliveries for their patients, and follow up with the parent/child dyad in the postpartum period. Designated prenatal slots are built into the schedule for each resident to allow access for prenatal continuity patients.
- Procedure Clinic: Residents will be regularly scheduled to the weekly procedure clinic as part of their continuity clinic, learning all the major primary care procedures including joint injections, skin procedures, and reproductive health procedures.
- Reproductive Health Clinic: Residents will be regularly scheduled to the weekly reproductive health clinic, learning all major reproductive health procedures including LARC insertion/removals, endometrial biopsies, and opt-out abortion care.
- Inpatient medicine rotations take place on a designated 21-bed Family Medicine Unit located at Montefiore Medical Center. Attending physicians are family medicine physicians, and inpatient care is based in a family medicine model. In our effort to provide the most up to date multidisciplinary care, a clinical pharmacist and a social worker round daily with the inpatient team.
- In addition to the structured curriculum it offers, Montefiore’s program encourages residents to pursue their individual interests and learning objectives, frequently done through electives. During their second and third years of training, the residents’ schedules are particularly flexible allowing them time to achieve this goal. This, of course, can include continued training in medical subspecialties, radiology, etc., but listed below are examples of some of the more popular and unique electives offered by our program. These are merely a representative grouping; with all of the resources of Albert Einstein Medical College at your disposal, an elective can be created in almost any area of study.
- Palliative Care: Residents learn symptom management, pain management, and how to address issues surrounding end of life care both in the outpatient setting and by working on the inpatient Palliative Care Unit.
- Addiction Medicine: Residents learn to care for patients who use substances and patients with substance use disorders; to recognize and effectively treat various complications of substance use; and apply principles of harm reduction to support patients in meeting their goals.
- HIV Care: Family medicine physicians are uniquely qualified to provide HIV care across all categories of the patient population. Montefiore’s Family Medicine department was at the heart of the AIDS epidemic when it first erupted and provided most of the HIV/AIDs care during that time. For this reason faculty and alumni of RPSM are now known as HIV specialists. This elective offers the opportunity to learn the practice of HIV specialty care from a Family Medicine perspective.
- Point-of-Care Ultrasound: Residents who complete the Point-of-Care Ultrasound (POCUS) elective rotation have an increased knowledge in the basics of ultrasound imaging and increased skills in ultrasound technique and image interpretation in select clinical circumstances.
- Addiction Medicine: The Montefiore-Einstein Addiction Medicine Mentored Training Program aims to develop a pipeline of front to expand the addiction workforce. Training will offer immersive training and dedicated mentorship in the rapidly evolving field of addiction medicine. Trainees will learn about a variety of addiction-related topics through precepted clinical rotations, interactive didactics, and guided readings. Trainees will be paired with a faculty mentor to complete a capstone project that improves the substance use disorder continuum of care. All trainees will receive addiction-related career mentoring and medical residents will be mentored to match in an Addiction Medicine Fellowship if that is within their career plans. Trainees will rotate through a mix of inpatient and outpatient clinical programs that provide precepted training in addiction treatment, recovery, and harm reduction. Clinical sites include opioid treatment programs, inpatient addiction consult service, office-based addiction medicine clinics, drug user health clinics, ambulatory withdrawal management programs, and chronic pain/opioid management clinics.
- Reproductive Health: The purpose of the reproductive health track is to provide family medicine residents with an enhanced reproductive health experience. Residents will graduate with competency and confidence in reproductive health care and procedures including contraception and abortion options counseling, medication abortion/first trimester procedural abortion/all LARC procedures, managing early pregnancy loss, managing contraceptive side effects, and managing post-abortion questions and complications.
- HIV: The purpose of the HIV track is to prepare family medicine physicians to provide comprehensive primary HIV care through an interdisciplinary approach and strengthen the skills in caring for patients affected by HIV within the context of their life and social experiences. Residents who meet track requirements will be eligible to sit for the AAHIVM HIV Specialist Credentialing Exam.
- Homeless Healthcare: The Homeless Healthcare Track is a 2-year structured path for residents to gain additional training in care and advocacy for those experiencing homelessness. The track is open to a maximum of three residents per year.
Inpatient Medicine
Electives
Tracks
Tracks allow residents to pick an area of focus for their residency training. Working closely with a faculty mentor, residents who choose to be in a track will have rotations and other experiences related to their track included in their 2nd and 3rd year schedules. Residents are encouraged to complete a scholarly project related to their track (which can also serve as the social medicine project). There are four main tracks currently available.