Curriculum - Family Medicine Residency

Program Design and Educational Philosophy

The Reading Hospital Family Medicine Residency Program provides enhanced rotation experiences and ambulatory clinic training that simulates post-residency practice and participated in the Transforming Teaching Practices study administered by UCSF. Care delivered at our Family Health Care Center is consistent with the 10+3 Building Blocks of High-Performing Academic Primary Care, a patient-centered medical home model, and the “Clinic First” initiative, representing the most current and innovative models of practice redesign.

The Family Health Care Center clinic schedule represents a 3:1/2:2 X+Y, predictable model. PGY-1 and PGY-2 residents benefit from three weeks of uninterrupted rotation experience and one week of dedicated, focused ambulatory family medicine. As residents enter their PGY-3 year, ambulatory training becomes the priority, alternating between rotation experiences and outpatient family medicine practice every two weeks.

Compared to a traditional approach where office hours and outside rotations are a daily mixture, this predictable scheduling model creates benefits including enhanced productivity, improved continuity of care, and reduced fragmentation of outside rotations. Sequential half-days of office practice simulate “real life” after residency and allow dual mastery of both medical management and the efficiencies required to survive in future practice. Our team-based care structure including physicians, nurses, and administrative support staff is strengthened. 

Longitudinal and Osteopathic Experiences

Longitudinal experiences include nursing home geriatric care, gastroenterology, urology, infectious disease, prenatal care, community medicine at Berks Free Clinic, and home visits. 

Osteopathic experiences occur longitudinally and include the osteopathic OMT clinic, osteopathic didactics, and OMT hands-on labs, practice sessions, and practicals. 

Residents are supported and encouraged to use elective time to craft customized educational tracks based on any areas of special interest such as population health, sports medicine, addiction Medicine, or Community Medicine.

Curriculum Block Schedule