Primary Care Track
The Saint Louis University Internal Medicine Residency Program’s mission is to train great internists in a positive environment while maintaining focus on collaborative care, and keeping the patient as the center of daily work.
Mission Statement
The primary care track strives to provide additional experience for residents focused on clinic-based careers, especially in primary care general internal medicine with a focus on developing the knowledge, skills and attitudes to lead effective healthcare teams in managing a primary care panel as well as to educate patients and other learners. We aim to develop physicians who treat the individual patient with an eye on maintaining the health of the population they are charged with caring for.
Vision
Graduates of the Saint Louis University Internal Medicine Primary Care Track will practice exceptional evidence-based medicine; they will be recognized as effective teachers in the clinic; they will be adept at identifying problems and developing solutions to improve healthcare systems; and they will use those skills to improve the health of their communities.
Most of all, our graduates will be recognized locally and nationally for their ability to manage patient populations to improve the care of the patient through leading multidisciplinary teams. The program is ideal for residents interested in pursuing a career in academic general internal medicine.
Applying to the Track
We will plan to recruit a new resident into the track each year. For more information on the primary care track, please contact Paul Kunnath, M.D. at paul.kunnath@health.slu.edu.
Program Overview
Residents in the primary care track will have a dedicated three-month block during each year of their residency devoted to developing their ambulatory medical practice in clinic settings while spending didactic time developing skills in clinic-based quality improvement, teaching in the clinic and exposure to multidisciplinary teams.
Experiences
Participants in the primary care track will engage in the following experiences:
- Ambulatory Medicine Block: along with expanded continuity clinic for their own panels,
residents will have weekly clinic experience in the following specialties:
- Endocrinology
- Gynecology
- Sports medicine
- Weight/metabolism
- Dermatology
- Additional experiences based on resident needs
- Monthly didactics focused on outpatient focused topics including:
- Billing and coding
- Managing patients with different care levels including home health, assisted living etc
- Teaching in the clinic
- Collaborating with advanced practice providers
- Collaborate on a year-long quality improvement project
Objectives
Below are the objectives that graduates will accomplish upon completion of this track.
Clinical Practice
- Develop specialty-level experience with routine conditions encountered in the primary care setting
- Demonstrate proficiency in routine clinic based procedures
- Embrace a growth mindset by actively seeking feedback and consistently striving for improvement.
Quality Improvement
- Identify quality gaps in the primary care clinic
- Develop an improvement plan with a focus on measurable outcomes
- Demonstrate proficiency in collaborative quality improvement
Career and Professional Development
- Develop a frameworks for teaching in the clinic setting
- Establish practice patterns for successful primary care practice
- Explore and develop individual professional identity
Current Residents
- PGY 2 - Adam Streicher
- PGY 3 - Andrea Philip
- PGY 3 - David Hannibal