The Family Medicine Residency Center, provides residents with the opportunity to learn family-centered care. Each first year resident is given a panel of families to manage over the ensuing three years, and each panel enlarges as the resident gains experience. A full spectrum of care is given in the office, from newborn to adolescent medicine, to obstetrical and adult medicine, to geriatrics.

Our office is located in the Medical Center building adjacent to The Williamsport Hospital campus. Complete with 17 modern exam rooms surrounding a centralized nursing station and preceptor area, a video room, conference room, two procedure rooms, an osteopathic manipulation room with equipment including an electric table, a lounge and faculty and administrative offices, the office handles 13,000 visits a year.

The procedure rooms are equipped to handle excisions, hyfurcation, cryosurgery, punch biopsies, laceration repair, flexible sigmoidoscopy, vasectomies, endometrial biopsy, colposcopy and fracture care. Video monitors and other optical systems permit residents to "view" their procedures. The office also has facilities for performing EKGs, tympanograms, spirometry, audiometry, hematocrits, pregnancy tests and microscopic examination of fluids and tissues.

Residents learn and maintain continuity of care for patients through their Family Medicine Residency Center experience. Time spent in the office progressively increases over the three years. First-year residents are scheduled for one-half day a week. Second-year residents are scheduled for two to three half days per week. Third-year residents are scheduled for three to five half days per week. During the second and third years of training, residents also provide care to geriatric patients at local nursing homes and via home visits.

Problem-oriented medical records are the standard in the office. An office electronic medical record connects to the Hospital's lab, EKG and imaging systems. All are accessible 24 hours a day, ensuring rapid access to all outpatient data, any time, day or night, from any Hospital location and remotely from residents' homes.

Most teaching of office medicine occurs in our preceptor/resource room in which the residents complete their charts, discuss cases with the preceptors and have immediate access to a full library and broad selection of patient education materials. All office charts are reviewed by the preceptors and oral and written feedback is given to each resident. Weekly conferences are held with first-year residents that stress the outpatient management of common problems. Computer on-line searches are readily available, and each resident is given a hand-held personal digital assistant device to assist with information retrieval and clinical management.

Outpatient primary care medicine is actually taught on several rotations (e.g., outpatient pediatrics, OB/GYN, dermatology, urology, psychiatry and community medicine); however, the Family Medicine Residency Center is "where it all comes together" and the family medicine approach is taught, refined and honed for each resident.