The UPMC McKeesport Family Medicine Residency Program, in accordance with ACGME mandates, fully and actively works to incorporate scholarship into every aspect of the residency curriculum. The discovery of knowledge is critical to the continued growth and development of all family medicine physicians. Our residency aims to improve patient care, enhance medical education, and advance our population's health through resident engagement in both quality improvement initiatives and individual resident projects.
- Impact through Quality Improvement
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At McKeesport Hospital, residents participate in several QI projects including monthly error disclosure workshops, nursing-physician bedside Dyad rounding, COVID Patient care and COVID Unit development, medication reconciliation with the inpatient team and pharmacists, and streamlined transitions of care from the hospital back to the clinic. Our health center also participates in local projects including a community wellness day and patient engagement through a community advisory council. At The 9th Street Clinic, our associated free clinic for uninsured patients, there are ongoing efforts to improve clinic follow-up care and access to specific community health resources such as vision health, increase smoking cessation screening and education rates, deploy telemedicine clinic visits, and institute better access to translation for non-English speaking patients. On a national level, UPMC McKeesport family medicine residency is one of the foundational members of The IMPLICIT Network (Interventions to Minimize Preterm and Low birth weight Infants through Continuous Improvement Techniques). Founded in 2003, IMPLICIT is a multi-center collaboration of family medicine residencies that develops and implements initiatives to improve maternal-child health (www.fmec.implicit.org) including obstetric chart review, Interconception Care (ICC) and the new 4th Trimester Project.
- Inquiry through Resident Projects
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Each of our family medicine residents works closely with the research director and their faculty advisor interests and develops a project in their area of interest within family medicine. Projects range from patient care to community outreach to resident education. Each 2nd-year resident is required to present a poster and each 3rd-year resident is required to present their completed project at our annual scholarship day, where each project is evaluated by a group of internal and external faculty members. We also encourage participation in local, regional, and national venues such as the Family Medicine Education Consortium (FMEC) and the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM) to showcase and further develop projects. By developing skills and supporting scholarly inquiry in training, we believe that our graduates will improve the quality, effectiveness, accessibility, and sustainability of primary care throughout the country and abroad.
Take a look at the exciting breadth and depth of our residents' projects in previous years.