Maggie McKay (Host): If you're considering a career in Medicine and want to learn more about Family Medicine residency at Community Memorial Healthcare, today we'll find out with Dr. Brian Utz and Dr. Monica Hernandez. Welcome to Wise and Well presented by Community Memorial Healthcare. I'm your host, Maggie McKay. Great to have you both here today. Would you please introduce yourselves? Dr. Utz?

Dr. Brian Utz: I'm Dr. Brian Utz. I'm the Program Director at the Family Medicine Residency at Community Memorial Healthcare.

Host: Dr. Hernandez?

Dr. Monica Hernandez: And I'm Monica Hernandez. I'm one of the co-chiefs third year Family Medicine resident physicians.

Host: Dr. Hernandez, what's the process of choosing a residency program for a medical student? And what are the most important factors to consider when evaluating programs?

Dr. Monica Hernandez: I'd compare it to applying for college. So, you try to set your best foot forward and they're trying to show you the best parts of their program. But you should also ask questions about the areas where they can improve, how they support student wellness, things like that. And so, I think, the most important factors to consider when evaluating a program would be what the residents feel like the residency itself can improve on because that goes to show that they're aware that their program is not perfect, but they're avidly trying to improve aspects of it. And then also, what are the best parts of their program, what they feel sets their program apart, because that can help you decide between programs.

Host: Dr. Hernandez, what ultimately led you to choose Community Memorial Healthcare's Graduate Medical Education Program?

Dr. Monica Hernandez: So, I had done a sub-I or an audition rotation in the end of my fourth year, and I had really enjoyed my experience working with the residents, the staff. All of the faculty that I interacted with are very eager to teach. And I feel like that set itself apart for me in comparison to other programs where it's really hard to find a program where everybody in the hospital is just nice and involved in the community, and everybody makes you feel at home and like you're amongst family.

Host: That's amazing. I mean, that's so crucial when you think about how many hours a day you spend with your co-workers and at work, probably more than with your family. Dr. Utz, can you describe the philosophy of your residency program? What sets it apart from other programs across the country?

Dr. Brian Utz: I think our goal in our program is to develop really broadly trained family doctors that are free to pursue their interests while getting a broad base of education, so that they can be successful kind of no matter what arena they're going into once they graduate. A lot of people don't know what they want to do at the beginning of residency. So, we help try to identify that for the residents and encourage them to pursue electives and things that they are interested in, really just trying to get them a broad knowledge base and prepare them for the future.

Host: Dr. Hernandez, can you discuss the role of community involvement in your residency program? How do residents contribute to the health and well being of the community?

Dr. Monica Hernandez: As Family Medicine residents, I feel like just being residents, we contribute to the health and well-being of our community and educating and counseling our patients with their overall health, every patient encounter. More specifically for our residency program, we have a quality improvement project for weight and wellness where we interact with overweight and obese patient populations and we offer counseling on the education part and nutrition part of weight loss and maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

And then, we also do different exercises since we know not everybody has the time in their day to day life to be able to set apart time all to exercise and understand more about their health. So, I feel like that's just one of the ways that our program specifically tries to help to contribute to the health and overall well-being in our community.

Host: Dr. Utz, what are some unique aspects of your residency curriculum that prepare residents for the diverse roles of a family physician?

Dr. Brian Utz: We have a few different things. The number one that comes to mind is our urgent care experience. We opened a couple of years ago an urgent care within our continuity clinic, and that has been huge for educating our residents, particularly on the common office procedures that are performed. With the rise of urgent care, nationally, I'm finding that a lot of residencies don't really do a lot of urgent care. And so, our residency, we spend quite a bit of time doing urgent care, taking care of fractures, lacerations, and all sorts of things.

In addition to that, we spend a little bit more time than average on inpatient medicine, and just really bolstering our complex medical management. I think a lot of our residents end up comfortable, even if they're not going to practice in the inpatient setting, but they're more comfortable taking care of medically complex patients. And we have an internal medicine residency at our facility, which also helps with the strength of inpatient training.

Host: And can you describe how the program facilitates building long-term relationships with patients through longitudinal care?

Dr. Brian Utz: One of the great things about Family Medicine is that we see patients across a broad spectrum of care facilities. We have, like I mentioned earlier, our urgent care that we see our patients through in Ojai, which is a nearby community. We have skilled nursing facility that our residents rotate through and also are seeing longitudinal continuity patients that live at the nursing home. They're assigned patients there. They go through our pediatrics clinics and pediatric subspecialty clinics. And then, of course, seeing patients in the hospital. So, it's a really great thing for family practice to be able to see patients in such a wide variety of settings. And then, oftentimes, we'll see the same patient across multiple settings. You'll see them in the clinic and you'll see them when they get admitted or, when they're on specialty rotations, they'll see that same patient It's always kind of funny, they may have sent that patient from the Continuity Clinic to the cardiologist and they happen to be rotating through Cardiology and then see that same patient.

Host: Dr. Hernandez, the Family Medicine Program has a strong emphasis on community service and underserved populations. Can you elaborate on the specific opportunities that residents have to engage with the community?

Dr. Monica Hernandez: There are various opportunities for us to be involved with the community. One of the recurring ones is the Westminster Clinic, so that happens a couple Tuesdays out of the month, where we spend a few hours with underserved populations at a local church that offers their services for us to be able to provide free services to the community and they have access to free labs and other resources. So, it's a free clinic that we're able to frequently volunteer with.

We help serve migrant farm workers and otherwise uninsured population that wouldn't otherwise have access to that care. One of the other examples of how we engage with the community is our Mountains to Beach Marathon, which we frequently have multiple residents sign up for. Backpack Medicine, which is one of our Addiction Medicine opportunities. While you're on the rotation or on a different rotation, you can offer to volunteer for those opportunities as well. Flu Clinics, our YMCA Summer Camp Physical Screenings, which we just did, and various other free clinics that we offer the community.

Host: That's great. And Dr. Utz, what advice would you give to medical students interested in applying to your program?

Dr. Brian Utz: The best advice I can give is to come do an audition rotation with us. We take students from July until January for the most part. We've got fourth year medical students here ideally for a month, but even if it's only two weeks. It's just a great chance for us to really get to know the students that are applying and vice versa for them to get to know us. You know, there's a lot of different flavors of programs and different program personalities. And so, I think it's really important when you're choosing a residency to find a place that you're going to be happy. And it's hard to assess that in just an interview. ,So I would advise setting up an audition, spending a little bit more time with us.

Host: That sounds like some good advice. Dr. Hernandez, how does the program support work-life balance for residents? Because you always hear about residency and how they practically live at the hospital.

Dr. Monica Hernandez: I'd say that our residency does not have a problem with balancing work and life. I think, if you have interest outside of Medicine, which most of us do. You can easily find time with how our curriculum is structured to be able to participate in what you would normally do outside of work. For example, one of the big things in our residency, which is a big fad, at the time is pickleball. So, a lot of us play multiple times a week. Most of the residents have joined at least once. Some of the faculty have also joined us, and alumni. It's a great way for us to stay in touch with everyone that's been part of our program, including the medical students. The third year rotating Western University medical students get to participate with us as well.

We also have other sports that we're involved in, so we do our Wellness Turkey Bowl around Thanksgiving where we play flag football as a team. And we all have this dedicated, protected time to be able to do these wellness activities. But like I said, I'm still very much involved in indoor volleyball through the Recreational City team. I know other people have been involved in the city basketball leagues, and it's very easy to be able to balance work and life with our curriculum here. So, definitely not something that our program would have to be concerned with.

Host: Well, it sounds like there are a lot of good options. I knew you were going to say pickleball when you said the latest trend. It's true. It's such a good stress reliever and you can actually. Talk while you're doing it, I find, at least. Dr. Hernandez, is there anything else you'd like to add?

Dr. Monica Hernandez: I just second what Dr. Utz had said about doing an audition here, because I think that definitely makes the experience so much more rewarding to be able to get a taste firsthand of what our program has to offer and the great people that you would get the opportunity to work with in the future.

Host: Well, thank you both for sharing your expertise and your experience on this topic with us today. We so appreciate it. Again, that's Dr. Brian Utz and Dr. Monica Hernandez. To find out more, please visit mycmh.org/familymedicine. And if you found this podcast helpful, please share it on your social channels and check out our entire podcast library for topics of interest to you. I'm Maggie McKay. Thank you for listening to Wise and Well from Community Memorial Healthcare.