The UC Riverside School of Medicine’s family medicine residency program begins today, July 1, at Dignity Health St. Bernardine Medical Center in San Bernardino.
The three-year program is an expansion of the partnership between the School of Medicine and the medical center — a 342-bed, nonprofit hospital serving the Inland Empire in emergency care, maternity, orthopedics, and heart care.
The family medicine program had been housed at Desert Regional Medical Center in Palm Springs since 2015, where it accommodated a total of 24 residents. The move to St. Bernardine Medical Center is expected to provide greater synergies with the UCR School of Medicine’s existing internal medicine residency training program, which has rotation opportunities at St. Bernardine.
“The doctors, staff, and residents have all moved to the new location in San Bernardino with continuation of the previous training and enhanced opportunities to collaborate with our internal medicine residency program,” said Dr. Rajesh “Robby” Gulati, associate dean for graduate medical education at UCR. “The Inland Empire is in need of more family medicine and primary care physicians, and we are excited to continue to build on this strong residency program.”
According to Dr. Brigham C. Willis, senior associate dean of medical education at the UCR School of Medicine, the relocated family medicine residency program will improve educational opportunities for UCR medical students who do clinical training at St. Bernardine Medical Center.
“Residents function as key providers of the education of medical students,” he said. “The move of the family residency program to one of our key affiliates and main sites for the education of our students serves to further enhance our ability to produce mission-oriented graduates to serve the health care needs of the Inland Empire.”
The family medicine residency program at St. Bernardine Medical Center offers eight positions per year. The program graduated its first students in 2018. So far, including this year’s graduating class, 24 graduates have completed their residencies in the program. Eight residents just accepted into the program, who constitute the class of 2023, start on July 1.
More information about the residency programs in the UCR School of Medicine can be found here.
The UCR School of Medicine, which welcomed its first class of students in the fall of 2013, has a mission of expanding and diversifying the region’s physician workforce and developing innovative research and healthcare delivery models that improve the health of people living in inland Southern California. The school also offers a doctoral program in biomedical sciences and residency training programs in the medical specialties of family medicine, internal medicine, pediatrics, general surgery, neurology, and psychiatry. Fellowship programs are offered in addiction medicine, cardiovascular medicine, child and adolescent psychiatry, gastroenterology, and interventional cardiology.
