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Program Goals & Objectives

The primary goal of the Family Medicine Residency Training Program at Carl R. Darnall Army Medical Center is to train fully competent and compassionate family physicians that are prepared to provide quality, comprehensive and continuous primary medical care and health maintenance to families in both the military and civilian communities. This health care is not limited by a patient's age or sex, nor by a particular organ system or disease entity, be it biological, behavioral or social.

The fulfillment of this goal is influenced by the program's philosophy that family medicine is the cornerstone of medical practice, being broad in scope and built upon a core of knowledge and skills derived from the traditional medical and surgical models. However, family medicine goes further in that it combines these traditional models with the behavioral and psychosocial models to develop a discipline that is able to care for the "whole person" and their family. Thus, the program offers a balanced educational experience to satisfy this goal and philosophy. The curriculum is designed to provide the graduating family physician with a broad based knowledge in "traditional" medicine, which includes internal medicine, pediatrics, obstetrics, gynecology, surgery, and psychiatry. This knowledge is then combined with specialized training in interpersonal skills, family dynamics, cultural awareness, disease prevention, health promotion, community medicine, geriatrics, and the management of behavioral and psychosocial problems.

The graduating resident is also trained to be an Army family physician. So, in addition to the above experiences, the curriculum includes training in emergency medicine, military and operational medicine, and practice management.

Continuous and comprehensive care is an essential longitudinal component of these educational experiences. The resident is expected to maintain a continuing physician-patient relationship with a panel of patients no matter what rotation he/she may be on. In addition, the resident is expected to assume responsibility for the total health care of the patient and family.

In addition to training the resident to be a family physician, the program also promotes his/her full personal development, self-growth, and maturity. This is accomplished by assisting the junior physician in fully realizing that his/her professional responsibilities must be properly balanced with his/her roles as husband/wife, father/mother, family member, friend and community member.

The program also strives to develop the young physician to be an adult learner and educator. The program attempts to develop a sense of discipline for continuing medical education within each resident through the use of journal clubs and scholarly activities. Also, the resident has increasing responsibility for patient care and for education within the department as he/she progresses through the residency training. Physician well-being is stressed continuously in the program. An attempt is made to develop an adequate mix of education with patient care in order to avoid excessive fatigue. In addition, each resident is assigned a family practice faculty member who will act as his/her advisor. This advisor-advisee relationship is meant to prevent physician impairment, or if present, to appropriately intervene on behalf of the impaired resident and to protect the welfare of the patients.

The specialty rotations are taught by board-certified faculty who has demonstrated expertise in their fields. The educational experiences on these rotations are driven by the goals and objectives developed by the family medicine program for that specific rotation, which are then reviewed by the resident and attending.

The core cognitive aspects of family medicine are taught primarily by enthusiastic board-certified family physicians who role-model the concepts of family medicine. Through the residency's lecture series, residents are taught the basics of medical science from the family medicine perspective. This foundation is then built upon during both the family medicine clinic and inpatient rotations.