Family Medicine Residency

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Fellows have a 16-week dedicated block rotation on Hospice, during which there are regularly scheduled home Hospice visits. In addition, on most other rotations, fellows are assigned half-days to return to the Home Hospice service, to provide opportunity for continuity care of patients originally seen in other settings, including the hospital palliative care service or the outpatient palliative care clinic. HPM faculty will complete a written evaluation of the fellow's longitudinal home Hospice experience every six months.

In addition to the 16-week required hospital palliative care rotation, there are dedicated half-days for hospital palliative care on most other rotations. This provides an opportunity for continuity of care with patients originally seen in other settings, including the nursing home, inpatient Hospice, or palliative clinic. Further, the HPM fellow covers the hospital palliative care service during the weekend call responsibilities. HPM faculty will complete a written evaluation of the fellow's longitudinal hospital palliative care experience every six months.

In addition to the regularly scheduled half-days for inpatient Hospice on the 16-week required Hospice rotation, there are dedicated half-days for inpatient Hospice on most other rotations. This will provide an opportunity for continuity care of patients originally seen in other settings, including the hospital palliative care service or the outpatient palliative care clinic. In addition, HPM fellows cover the inpatient Hospice during the weekend call responsibilities.

Further, after appropriate didactic experience and modeling by faculty, the HPM fellow will take day-time calls and e-mails from the inpatient hospice regarding to admissions, clinical problems, or other concerns. The fellow essentially serves as the Assistant Medical Director of Pine Pointe Hospice, handling decisions with faculty backup. HPM faculty will complete a written evaluation of the fellow's longitudinal inpatient Hospice experience every six months.

HPM fellows have 1 half-day continuity palliative care clinics every two weeks of the one year fellowship (total of 26 sessions). Every Monday afternoon, fellows evaluate new and continuity patients at the palliative care clinic, held at the Mercer Medicine internal medicine clinic on First Street. This clinic is supervised by Dr. Urvi Patel, HPM physician faculty member. Patients with severe chronic conditions as well as life-limiting illnesses will receive comprehensive evaluation the faculty and fellow, with special emphasis on management of pain and other symptoms. Many of these patients are referred from a large oncology practice in Macon to facilitate holistic and comprehensive cancer care. During the palliative care clinic experience, fellows will have 60 minutes for new patients and 30 minutes for established patients. Dr. Patel may also notify the HPM fellow of palliative care patients that she sees during other clinic sessions, and the HPM fellow will participate as allowed by other fellowship responsibilities. HPM faculty will complete a written evaluation of the fellows' longitudinal palliative care clinic experience every six months.

On the first day of each calendar month, fellows will receive a 30-question written practice examination, with questions in the format of the ABMS CAQ Exam. Each test must be completed and the answer sheet turned in by the 1st of the following month. You will receive two sets of tests on July 1st (for July and August - the July test is not turned in).

These tests are graded and returned at the monthly Board Review sessions. Faculty will focus that hour's discussion on questions missed by fellows. All answers are referenced and linked back to standard sources. Fellows are encouraged to read these sources to strengthen any identified areas of weakness. In some cases, test questions appropriate to the topic are attached to the required reading for each of our didactic sessions.