The Family Practice Residency is a two-year program in which the resident is given progressively increasing responsibility in patient care and management. Within the Family Practice Units and in community practices, residents are involved directly with ambulatory patients to whom they relate as family physicians and provide primary care on an episodic, continuing, and preventative basis under the supervision of clinical faculty.
In addition, residents receive training in various hospitals in medicine, surgery, pediatrics, obstetrics and gynaecology, emergency, psychiatry, geriatrics, and musculoskeletal medicine. Formal rounds, seminars, tutorials, daily chart rounds, and journal clubs round out the residents' training in areas particularly pertinent to Family Practice.
Training occurs at the following principal sites: Vancouver Fraser, St. Paul's, Victoria, Chilliwack, Prince George, Aboriginal (Victoria), Nanaimo, Abbotsford, Surrey, Rural (Okanagan-based and Prince George-based rural training), and IMG sites (Vancouver, Rural Fraser and Rural Vancouver Island). In the past few years, we have developed more regional sites in Coastal (North Shore) and Kamloops, as well as rural training sites in Terrace, Fort St. John, Strathcona (Comox and Campbell River), Kootenay Boundary (Trail) and Okanagan South (Penticton).
An additional one-year training program of enhanced vocational skills is offered in emergency medicine, palliative medicine, care of elderly, and anesthesia. Shorter training periods are offered in maternal health, psychiatry, addiction medicine, women's medicine, global health, surgical skills, and other areas of interest to practising physicians. The department also offers a two-year, part-time clinician scholar program designed to enhance the research capacity of marginalized, rural, and/or remote populations and communities.