Inpatient adult medicine education takes place primarily on the Family Medicine Inpatient Service(FMIS) at Hillcrest Medical Center.  This experience include the admission and care of adult patients from a variety of settings, including the Family Medicine Center, transfers to Hillcrest from various regional hospitals and from the emergency department.  This is a busy, demanding experience requiring significant autonomy and decision-making.  Our attending faculty provide academic teaching and patient care oversight, and are physically present in the hospital 24 hours a day.  The clinical experience is extensive, including acute medical illnesses, acute surgical illnesses and trauma, drug overdoses and suicide attempts, severe psychiatric illnesses and medical consultations on surgical patients.  There is extensive involvement in the intensive care unit, as patients are often admitted directly to the ICU due to the severity of the illness.  As well, our residents and faculty are responsible for Code Blue calls for the entire hospital every evening and weekend and holidays.  There are daily morning devotions for the team and a strong emphasis on learning how to incorporate prayer and ministry into the care of patients.

Our educational program in behavioral medicine is outstanding. Covering a wide range of training needs, our behavioral medicine program seeks to both increase the resident’s knowledge of the spiritual components of the problems they see and to integrate their faith into all of their patient care. Residents acquire skills necessary to make them both effective and efficient in the care they deliver, learning both to manage the unique aspects of positional power as well as to understand the role of their own unique gifts and personality.  Recognizing that all physicians counsel, the behavioral medicine curriculum is designed to help residents recognize and intervene in the spectrum of psycho/social/spiritual problems presented by their patients.  There is also an elective counseling track for those residents who desire to gain a broader base of group and individual counseling skills.  All residents do a one month behavioral medicine rotation which includes a wide variety of experiences with at risk populations.  Finally, and probably most important, our behavioral faculty are dedicated to graduating whole, as well as skilled, residents and provide supportive care for the resident and their family throughout the three years.

Our residency provides all of the required educational components in Community Medicine for our residents.  This includes working with the low income maternal health clinic, the local health department, home health agencies, hospice agencies and occupational medicine clinics.  In addition, all residents have the opportunity throughout the entire three years to work on our mobile medical vans that provide free medical care and medicines to the medically underserved and low income populations in our Tulsa community.  Good Samaritan Health Services operates these vans and clinics in cooperation with local churches, and is our partner in reaching out to these needy individuals and families, providing high quality medical care and at the same time sharing hope.

Each resident has 4-6 months of elective time available.  With the help and oversight of their academic advisor, each resident selects specific educational opportunities that fit with his or her future goals and practice plans.  A wide variety of options exist, both locally in Tulsa and out of town – in the US or in international settings.  This allows each resident to tailor their residency experience to best prepare for practicing medicine after residency.

Our family medicine center, Family Medical Care, is at the heart of our training program.  In this facility residents learn to provide outstanding outpatient care to their patients in a continuous fashion.  Each resident has a panel of patients that they care for on an ongoing basis and patients view the resident as their personal physician.

In His Image Family Medicine Residency has a strong emphasis on international health, and many of our graduates serve in full-time outreach overseas.  Many of our residents are interested in medical outreach, and our faculty members have extensive experience in international medicine, both long term and short term.  Most of our residents choose to do an international health rotation during residency, and In His Image is able to assist in coordinating and funding these educational rotations.  We have a wide variety of contacts in the international community ranging from hospitals and clinics to international academic educational settings. In His Image is also active in disaster relief, responding quickly by sending teams to stricken areas.

All residents spend focused time in intensive care medicine, cardiology, gastroenterology and neurology.  These rotations are a combination of inpatient and outpatient settings. Additional opportunities are available for focused experiences in rheumatology, infectious disease, allergy, endocrinology, and others.

Our residency has a strong emphasis in obstetrics. Currently we have twelve core family practice physicians on our faculty who are actively practicing and teaching obstetrics. Four of our faculty members have C-section privileges at our primary hospital. We have a busy obstetrics service on our family medicine inpatient service and provide obstetrical care for a large maternity population at our local Maternal Health Clinic. Our residents all graduate with an extensive OB experience and are competent to practice obstetrics following graduation if they so choose.

All residents spend focused time on both orthopedics and sports medicine, working with local orthopedic surgeons, sports medicine specialists, team physicians, physical medicine and rehab physicians, trainers and physical therapists.

All of the residents rotate for two months during their PGY1 year as a member of the University of Oklahoma Pediatrics Residency team at the Saint Francis Children’s Hospital. This inpatient experience provides an outstanding educational opportunity in the diagnosis and care of pediatric patients. Additional experience in inpatient pediatrics is obtained on all family medicine inpatient service (FMIS) rotations; each resident will have approximately 6 months of FMIS. Two months of required outpatient pediatrics is obtained during the resident’s second and third years in a variety of pediatric clinics; including private practices, the Indian Health Service, and the University of Oklahoma.

All residents work directly with outstanding community physicians on surgical rotations.  Specifically this includes: rotations in general surgery, covering operative, inpatient and outpatient aspects; urology; otorhinolaryngology; ophthalmology; and dermatology.

All residents are required to complete an extensive list of educational requirements in order to graduate.  For those residents interested in additional preparation and training in specific areas, we offer three areas of special emphasis. These are focused tracks that require additional time and effort for the residents who choose to participate in one or all.  These tracks include: Advanced Counseling Track; Advanced Obstetrics Track; and the International Health Track. Each track has specific curricular items, and a longitudinal experience plan and format, and a faculty coordinator. Residents completing these Tracks receive special recognition at graduation, including a Certificate of Completion for each Track successfully completed.