Photo By Petty Officer 1st Class James Stenberg | Six residents from Naval Hospital Pensacola’s Family Medicine Residency Program...... read more read more
PENSACOLA, Fla. - After three years of hard work and studying for boards, six residents from Naval Hospital Pensacola graduated from the Family Medicine Residency Program June 27 and are now ready to be family medicine physicians in the Navy.
This year’s graduating residents marked the 40th anniversary of the program at NHP.
“It’s a bitter sweet feeling graduating today,” said Lt. Kevin Bernstein, chief resident, who will be reporting to the USS Bonhomme Richard in Okinawa, Japan. “It’s great to be graduating, but I worked with a great group of people here that I’ll miss.”
Naval Hospital Pensacola is one of five family medicine teaching hospitals currently in the Navy. All residents are medical school graduates, and during their first year of residency, they are referred to as interns. Joining the six residents on Friday were nine graduating interns who must still complete the remaining two years of the residency program. Graduating interns have the option of immediately continuing their residency program or they can elect to serve as a flight surgeon or in undersea or general medicine before completing their residency.
Throughout all three years, residents are exposed to the full scope of family medicine and serve as primary care managers for patients within one of NHP’s Family Medicine Medical Home Port Teams. They treat patients of all ages and see a variety of health care scenarios in both inpatient and outpatient settings to include pediatrics, surgery, internal medicine, gynecology, psychiatry, orthopedics, dermatology and neurology. It is not uncommon for a resident to be the one who tells a patient she is pregnant, deliver the baby and provide care for the mother and infant after the birth. This wide range of health care knowledge is what attracted many of the residents to family medicine.
“Residents graduate from here very efficient in clinic care,” said Cmdr. Kelly Latimer, residency program director. “They can take care of any chronic or acute disease, understand the basics of a Medical Home Port Team, know how to deliver a baby, how to stabilize a critically ill patient and how to provide inpatient care. Most of them can also do procedures like vasectomies, colposcopies, joint injections and exercise stress tests.”
One of the advantages these residents had doing their residency at NHP was the exposure to the Medical Home Port Team process, which is a team based approach to primary health care where patients are assigned to a specific team. Naval Hospital Pensacola’s Family Medicine Residency Program was the first one in the DoD to pilot Medical Home Port Teams. Each team reviews all of their patient’s medical needs and ensures that anything required for the patient is addressed during an appointment, including booking referrals and giving needed immunizations. Understanding the Medical Home Port Team process will benefit all of Navy Medicine when the residents report to new commands with this knowledge.
“They are now experts with the Medical Home Port process,” said Capt. Maureen Padden, commanding officer, NHP, who completed her residency at Naval Hospital Camp Pendleton, Calif., in 1998. “They will take the knowledge they have learned here and apply it at their next assignment. Navy Medicine has some of the finest health care providers in the world and these new family medicine physicians are fortunate to be part of a team that provides care to service members and their families.”
Despite the long hours and lack of sleep, these new family medicine physicians are now prepared for whatever their next assignment will be in Navy Medicine.
“I couldn’t have [graduated] without the help and support of everyone at the hospital,” said Bernstein. “Three years ago, as a new intern, I didn’t have any responsibilities, now I feel like I am ready to provide exceptional care to anyone that I am fortunate enough to care for.”
The graduating residents were: Lt. Cmdr. Daniel Elliot, Lt. Kevin Bernstein, Lt. Daniel Bradley, Lt. Yummy Nguyen, Lt. Bruce Matchin and Lt. Visong Tring.
The Graduating interns were: Lt. Cmdr. Brett Lessman, Lt. Rebecca Allen, Lt. Charles Martin, Lt. Laura McCain, Lt. Maya Payne, Lt. Caitlin Redman, Lt. T. Blake Vanbrunt, Lt. James Writer and Lt. Andrea Wurzer.
| Date Taken: | 06.27.2014 |
| Date Posted: | 06.30.2014 15:52 |
| Story ID: | 134884 |
| Location: | PENSACOLA, FL, US |
| Web Views: | 383 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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