Providence St. Vincent Medical Center: Special Opportunities & Experiences
In addition to academic pursuits, the residency program at Providence St. Vincent Medical Center fosters opportunities to enrich one's life experience and provide care for the underserved. The program encourages residents to embrace the social responsibilities of medicine and helps them experience fields of medicine that are not available on site at the medical center.
An international health rotation in East Africa is available to interested senior residents. Accompanied by an attending, the resident rotates in the main teaching hospital. The resident joins a ward team, taking call only during the week. In addition to providing patient care in the hospital, the resident has a significant role teaching the medical students and interns.
Previous residents appreciated this medical experience in a developing country for the way it enhanced their understanding of heath care delivery and infectious diseases:
Improve diagnostic skills in the absence of a high-technology environment
Recognize how culture and economics influence health
Appreciate our own health care system
Experience personal growth while caring for the underserved
The weekends are free to explore the surrounding country, and residents have enjoyed tracking gorillas, climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro and rafting the Nile. Read trip reports and browse the “St. Vinnie’s Guide to Mbarara” at www.ugandawiki.org.
Those interested in setting up their own international or away elective are also welcome to do so, provided it meets with the requirements of the ACGME. Residents have taken the opportunity to do rotations in Tanzania, Uganda, Peru, Japan and underserved areas of the United States. The East Africa electives are set up in conjunction with Health Volunteers Overseas and are subsidized through grants from the hospital.
Off-Site Electives The Providence St. Vincent residency program accommodates off-campus electives and encourages residents to pursue their own interests. In addition to the international health care elective, residents have organized special electives in aerospace medicine and genetics. Residents have also worked with mission-based health care initiatives and arranged rotations at foreign universities.
Virginia Garcia Clinic Virginia Garcia Memorial Health Center provides high quality, comprehensive and culturally appropriate primary health care to the communities of Washington and Yamhill counties. A special emphasis is placed on migrant and seasonal farm workers and others with barriers to receiving health care. Seventy-six percent of the patients are Hispanic; 80 percent are uninsured. Residents on the Float/Medical Consultation rotation spend a half-day each week working at the Virginia Garcia clinic. This offers residents the opportunity to participate in a charitable activity and adds diversity to the residency experience.
Resident Development Our residents learn not just by being taught, but also by teaching -- interns, medical students, each other (and, not infrequently, faculty). In recognition of our residents' roles as teachers, we created Resident Teaching Seminars to complement our established Leadership Training Seminars. They draw on the considerable literature related to resident teaching, as well as our residents' personal experiences, to build knowledge and skills about teaching. The focus is on team dynamics, role modeling, evaluation and efficient didactic teaching techniques.
International Elective
