Family Medicine Residency

The Family Medicine Inpatient Service (FMIS) is the adult medicine rotation and features a resident team of interns, an upper-level resident and visiting medical students who round on the service with one of our family medicine faculty members.

Residents care for patients from their continuity clinics and learn to consult various specialists in our hospital.  Because Hillsboro Medical Center is a community hospital setting, residents learn to transfer higher acuity patients who need an advanced level of care to our tertiary care partner, OHSU.

All residents must be BLS and ACLS certified.  Cross-cover resident coverage allows residents on inpatient services to go to afternoon clinic, at least once a week. A Night float system provides overnight call coverage.

Residents experience critical care medicine with an intensivist and work alongside internal medicine residents at Hillsboro Medical Center. The ICU is closed, allowing for focused learning while on this rotation.

Family Medicine Faculty Sam Crane delivered the first triplets born at Hillsboro Medical Center.

Residents follow prenatal patients in both FMP sites and are precepted by family physician faculty who provide prenatal care, several of whom also perform c-sections.  Babies are delivered at Hillsboro Medical Center in the Family Birth Unit.  Residents also participate in pre- and post-natal care with our midwifery colleagues.

Residents have the opportunity to learn ultrasound skills and about complications in high-risk pregnancies at the Maternal Fetal Medicine clinic on the Hillsboro Medical Center campus.  All residents must complete the Advanced Life Support in Obstetrics (ALSO) course.

Residents who are interested in comprehensive prenatal care will have additional time on the Labor & Delivery unit and will have opportunities to be involved in cesarean sections.

During the four weeks of Gynecology rotations, residents treat women of all ages and learn various outpatient procedures including:

• Pap smears
• Endometrial Biopsy (EMB)
• Colposcopies
• Long-acting reversible contraception (LARC) placement and removal

They will spend some time at Planned Parenthood and the mammography center.  Focused gynecology clinics include: colposcopy, pelvic pain and early pregnancy.

During inpatient pediatrics residents will:

• Round with neonatologists in Hillsboro Medical Center’s Level 2 NICU.
• Complete an OHSU Doernbecher Children’s Hospital second year inpatient rotation
• Learn how to stabilize and transfer sick children.
• Utilize skills learned during their PALS and NRP certification.

Specialized care for outpatient pediatrics will take place at:

• A busy private pediatrician’s office in Hillsboro
• A Federally Qualified Health Center in Hillsboro
• School based Health Clinic
• Specialty clinics in Pediatrics
• Continuity clinic with panel of pediatric patients

All residents will work with a board-certified geriatrician during their geriatric rotation.  Other aspects of this rotation include:

• Geriatric Assessment Clinic at South Hillsboro
• Home visits
• Rounding on patients at a nearby long-term care facility
• Training in Physician’s Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST)
• Exposure to a hospice setting and palliative care setting

Residents and faculty staffed a medical booth sponsored by our community partner, KALO. (September 2023)

Residents learn about community medicine with ¡Salud! services, a program that provides health care to Oregon’s seasonal vineyard workers and their families.  Residents travel with a bi-lingual outreach team in the ¡Salud! medical van to local vineyards and get first-hand experience treating patients.  Given 24 percent of Hillsboro residents identify as Latino, residents are given time to utilize an online medical Spanish curriculum that is paid for by the residency.

Residents have focused didactics that cover social determinants of health and feature community partners.   Other opportunities include staffing health booths at the local minor league baseball stadium and health tents at community events and farmers markets.

Our residents have also participate in a mentorship program with students at Hillsboro High school.

Residents spend eight weeks working with a fellowship trained sports medicine family physician and orthopedic surgeons on their Orthopedic and Rehabilitation rotations and rotate through a Sports Medicine clinic.

The rotation emphasizes:

• Improving physical exam skills.
• Giving joint injections.
• Learning when to refer acute or chronic conditions.
• Providing sports physicals for athletes at high schools.
• Interacting with the community at outreach events.

Residents have the opportunity to learn musculoskeletal point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) skills from a national expert, as well as participate in medical tents at the Portland Marathon.

Patrick  O’Leary, M.D. leads a suturing didactics.

Residents work with general surgeons at Hillsboro Medical Center during their general surgery experience and learn the basics of pre- and post-operative care, including spending time in the operating room.

Residents have a minimum of one-week rotations with each of the following surgical sub-specialists: urology, ENT, ophthalmology and dermatology.

Residents spend at least eight weeks in Hillsboro Medical Center’s Emergency Department. They’ll will gain experience in:

• Treating adult and pediatric patients
• Learning about a wide variety of acute and emergent health issues
• Participating in the hospital’s rapid response teams
• Performing procedures in the ER, including POCUS
• Working shifts at a remote rural ER in John Day

Residents have six months of electives that help prepare them for future practice goals.  Multiple opportunities exist at Hillsboro Medical Center for specialty rotations and residents will have access to various elective and CME opportunities at OHSU, as well as rural rotations throughout the state as part of their RUSH elective (Rural-Underserved Health).

Current electives include sports medicine, migrant farmworker health, addiction medicine, palliative care, endocrinology, dermatology infectious disease and others.

Hillsboro is also a site for the COMPADRE grant, which is a joint grant between OHSU and UC Davis that hopes to provide rural elective opportunities amongst dozens of residency programs in Oregon and California.

Our curriculum features regularly scheduled didactics with family medicine faculty.

Didactics are scheduled for a half day each Wednesday and cover a rolling 18-month curriculum to cover the breadth of family medicine.  These also include OB chart review, balint, procedural training and focused symposia on social determinants of health.  Some shared didactics with the Internal Medicine Residents at Hillsboro Medical Center focus on specialist topics, grand rounds, and Patient Safety presentations.

Residents are required to complete two scholarly activities during residency and are involved in quality improvement initiatives at their continuity clinics and at Hillsboro Medical Center.  They are encouraged to participate in scholarship, mentorship and advocacy and are provided opportunities at both the local and state level, including the opportunity to serve as a Resident Director on the Oregon Academy of Family Physicians.

Residents evaluations are tracked on-line and shared with residents.  Together with your advisor and our faculty team, we will collaborate over the three years of your training to graduate you as a competent family physician who is ready to practice independently upon completion of the program.