Family Medicine Residency Curriculum

The purpose of the organized, procedural Family Medicine Residency curriculum at Wake Forest School of Medicine is to ensure that residents in training have appropriate exposure, both cognitively and experientially, to procedures in family medicine.

A full spectrum of office procedures is available for residents to master including:

• Colposcopy
• Cryotherapy
• Joint and bursal injections
• Long-acting reversible contraception
• Vasectomy
• Circumcisions
• Exercise treadmill testing
• Endometrial biopsies
• Ultrasound
• Common skin biopsies
• Elliptical excision procedures
• Osteopathic Manipulative Treatment (OMT)

Residents are introduced to clinical research concepts through short educational seminars as part of our didactic curriculum. Residents are also guided through a quality improvement project by a faculty mentor allowing them to meet ABFM requirements, learn about their own individual clinic performance, and become familiar implementing simple research design and analysis.

Active research conducted by faculty in our department includes exercise and nutrition habits, sports medicine, poultry processing and migrant farm workers, medical education, and work with the school based health alliance. Residents are encouraged to connect with mentors in these areas to assist with ongoing projects or develop ideas of their own.

Playing an important role in learning and collaboration, conferences include:

• Noon conference schedule with two to three departmental conferences per week throughout the year.
• One day each month, all residents gather for a resident meeting and afternoon seminar, providing the opportunity for regrouping and a shared intensive learning experience.
• Each class has its own additional monthly seminar with teaching and hands-on experiences targeted to their level of training.
• A 30-minute peer support session with Behavioral Science and clinical faculty during their seminar days.
• One-on-one monitoring of clinical work involves videotaping, closed-circuit TV and direct observation.

Residents also play an active role on departmental committees such as residency selection, curriculum, quality improvement, wellness and clinical operations. Additionally, each new resident is assigned a faculty adviser for the three years of training.

Continuity Clinic

Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Family Medicine Piedmont Plaza is the primary continuity clinic for both residents and faculty and administrative home for the residency. The practice is a 20,000-square-foot center that offers patients, staff and physicians the benefits of a community setting with over 50 providers at the center, including faculty, integrated behavioral health providers, residents and physician assistants. In addition to other blocks and rotations, residents are scheduled at Piedmont Plaza for care of their own panel of patients for one to four half days depending on the year of training. A ratio of at least one preceptor for every three to four residents in the clinic is maintained to enhance the training experience and emphasis is placed on clinical decision-making in the ambulatory setting. In addition, residents have the opportunity to educate and mentor Wake Forest medical students who all rotate through our practice. Beyond standard clinic visits, our center also offers group medical visits for chronic disease management and group pediatric visits.  

The patient population of the FMC is maintained to provide exposure to a diverse patient mix. A mix of managed care, fee for service and indigent populations allows exposure to all payer types. Special attention is made to maintain a geriatric population as well as a large pediatric population (with roughly 20 percent pediatric visits) to ensure exposure to all ages. Finally, a culturally and ethnically diverse population is served, including a rapidly expanding Hispanic population. 

Atrium Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center

• FM inpatient service caring for patients assigned to our practice and three local sister practices admitting adults and peds patients
• Birthing center
• Rotations in MICU
• Adult and Peds ED
• Pediatric Hospital
• Adult and peds subspecialty
• High Point Medical Center
• Davie Medical Center

Community Clinics

• Peace Haven Family Medicine
• Highland Avenue Family Medicine
• United Health Center
• Community Care Center
• Stokes County Health Department
• VAMC Salisbury and Kernersville