Educational Programs

Family Medicine plays a leading role in fellow, resident, and medical student teaching at the UC College of Medicine. Our Educational programs focus on training about the care of underserverd populations.

The Department offers courses, including a required third year clerkship, for medical students in all four years of training. The Clerkship includes, among other topics, training in evidence-based medicine, information technology, health disparities, cultural competence, and the care of low-income elderly patients.

In addition our traditional Family Medicine residency program, we have a combined Family Medicine/Psychiatry program, a Family Medicine/International Health Track, and an "Underserved" Residency Track. Our faculty also teach in the rural Clinton County Memorial Hospital/University of Cincinnati Family Medicine Residency.

The Department offers a one year "Underserved" Family Medicine Fellowship. Trainees in this program have their clinical and teaching experience at practices serving a variety of underserved patients including rural patients, the homeless, low income elderly, and Latino Immigrants.

Patient Care

Family physician faculty provide more than 100,000 outpatient visits per year at a variety of community-based clinical sites serving diverse populations – ranging from the affluent to the homeless.  We operate University Family Physicians at Forest Park and the Wyoming Family Practice Center.  We also have faculty based at University Pointe in Westchester and Clinton Memorial Hospital in Wilmington.
 
Other sites where faculty provide clinical care include The Christ and Jewish Hospitals, extended care facilities (Evergreen, Bridgeway Pointe, Maple Knoll Village, and St. Mary’s), Community Health Centers (at Lincoln Heights, Mt. Healthy, and Butler County), Vitas Hospice, the Affinity Center, the UC Student Health Center, Hillcrest, Alliance Primary Care at Springfield Pike, the Drop Inn Center and the Homeless Van.  We also have a small home visit program for frail elderly homebound patients.
 
The Department operates a Center for Alzheimer’s Care and a Geriatric Evaluation Center, both located at Maple Knoll Village helping to meet the needs of elderly patients and their care givers.

Research

The Department’s Research Division focuses on research that is directly related to family physicians and provides the basis for improving primary care.  Division faculty are working in several areas.  These include:

• Reducing errors and improving patient safety in primary care
• Improving the primary care of patients with headache
• Understanding barriers to primary care access among underserved populations
• Improving physicians’ detection of and response to domestic violence
• Helping physicians better understand and recognize mental health problems
• Improving palliative and end-of-life care in family practice

Community Service

The Department has a long-standing commitment to medical care of underserved populations both locally and in developing countries.
 
We provide care to the homeless at the Drop Inn Center and on the Homeless Healthcare Van.  Faculty supervise students at their Free clinic for the Homeless, and every three years the Department presents a conference on care of the homeless for a broad array of health and social service professionals who work with this population.
 
Faculty and residents provide care to Latino immigrants, many of whom do not speak English, at both the Lincoln Heights Health Connection practices and the Butler County Community Health Center.
 
In 1990 the Department developed an extensive patient care and community development project in rural Honduras, with faculty, residents, medical students, and trainees in the College of Nursing visiting the area twice per year to provide free health care to indigent patients, many of whom had never seen a physician.  In 1995 a similar project was developed in a remote area in the Amazon Basin.

Jeffery Susman, M.D. Fred Lazarus Jr. Professor and Chairman