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Program Highlights

The Mount Carmel Family Medicine Residency offers a strong family medicine education. We emphasize holistic care through our community outreach. We utilize an innovative educational environment including our state-of-the-art simulation center to produce quality physicians who contribute regularly to our specialty through ongoing research. And through it all, we offer a supportive environment by emphasizing physician wellness throughout our curriculum.

Community Outreach

Mount Carmel has a strong history of commitment to providing care to the medically underserved through its Outreach Program, and our residents support that tradition. The Medical Director of the Outreach Program is John O'Handley, MD, a past program director for the residency.

  • All of our residents serve on the Mount Carmel Outreach mobile coach during their Community Medicine rotation and electives.
  • The mobile coach is a state-of-the-art mobile outpatient unit that travels to homeless shelters, neighborhood centers and communities in need.
  • Residents provide medical assessments, procedures and treatment, diagnostic tests, immunizations, patient education, medications and health referrals for these underserved populations.

Mount Carmel realizes that our community stretches outside the bounds of Columbus, Ohio, and the United States.

  • We have a long-standing relationship with Global Health Volunteers to complete yearly medical mission trips in Kingston, Jamaica and Chiapas, Mexico.
  • These one to two-week medical mission trips are open to all interested residents.

Our Community Outreach continues to grow and develop yearly based on the interests of our residents. Additional areas of involvement include sports physical clinics, free clinic participation, Walk With A Doc, Cooking Matters, and volunteering at local sporting events.

Team-Based Care

Our Family Medicine Center, is home to our continuity outpatient training experience.

  • The Center is staffed by faculty, nursing and office staff all dedicated to providing our residents with a solid teaching experience during their ambulatory training.
  • Our patient care and resident education is further enhanced by the consistent presence of social workers and pharmacists.

This multi-disciplinary, team-based approach provides the best experience possible for both patients and residents.

Innovative Education

Our faculty is constantly engaged in curricular development in order to continue providing new innovation to enhance the residency education at Mount Carmel.

Some of the examples of these changes include:

  • Wednesday didactics with multiple in-person and virtual learning modalities
  • Monthly hands-on learning sessions at the Center for Innovative Learning for hands-on learning. There, we utilize video observation exam rooms and debriefing rooms to practice a variety of inpatient and outpatient encounters. Through the help of standardized patients and computerized mannequins, residents are able to practice communication skills in addition to developing diagnoses and treatment plans. The Center for Innovative Learning also provides the tools for procedural training including musculoskeletal injections, dermatologic procedures, ultrasound, and even breast exam training. Video observation of true patient encounters at the FMC, with medical and behavioral faculty review

Scholarly Activity

Both residents and faculty are encouraged and supported in their scholarly pursuits, which take the form of Grand Rounds, clinical research and quality improvement initiatives.

  • All residents participate in organizing and leading a Grand Rounds presentation during their PGY-3 year. This activity serves as one of the two ACGME-required scholarly activities during residency.
  • Monthly meetings during our Wednesday morning didactics serve as dedicated time to brainstorm and discuss the status of each resident’s research and/or quality improvement project(s). Lynn Shaffer, PhD, a Senior Statistical Analyst from the Office of Research Affairs, provides invaluable help from inception to publication of each project.
  • Past residents have conducted research funded by the American Cancer Society, Wright State University, The Ohio State University and the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP).
  • Our faculty and residents have published in many prestigious journals such as The American Family Physician, Journal of the American Medical Association, The Consultant, Family Practice Recertification and Family Practice Management. They have also presented at the AAFP Scientific Assembly, Society for Teachers of Family Medicine and ACGME conferences, AFMRD Program Director Workshop, Pediatric Academic Societies Annual Meeting, Society for Neuroscience and others.

Physician Wellness

Physician wellness is an area we not only acknowledge as important but seek to excel in. Wellness starts on day one of residency, through the support we provide our residents.

  • Each residency class meets monthly with the help of our behavioralist. These group meetings are when residents are able to grant each other support and help through this difficult time of learning and growth
  • Each resident is also paired with a faculty advisor who meets with him or her monthly to discuss specific rotations, overall progress and career goals. Our advisor relationships are an important area of mentorship and support. This close contact allows us to identify potential difficulties before they progress and ensure that each of our residents successfully attain their career goals.
  • Wellness is not only important to the Family Practice Residency program, but to the Mount Carmel Health System organization as a whole. Every year, we hold a system-wide Wellness Symposium, which is a time to reflect and add to the tools we each possess to maintain our personal wellness.
  • Throughout the year, our Wellness Committee provides physicians a variety of resources to aid in their journeys as medical professionals. Help is always available.

Unopposed Inpatient Experience

  • Our residents get the opportunity to learn inpatient adult medicine at Mount Carmel St. Ann’s Hospital, where they are directly supervised by our own Family Medicine faculty and attending physicians
  • Our service is staffed 24/7, and is the only Mount Carmel resident service housed at the hospital
  • This unopposed learning environment allows for maximal exposure to excellent learning, both from our patients and the consultants with whom we directly interact on a daily basis
  • Residents also have the opportunity to do elective rotations in hospital medicine; several of our graduates have gone on to practice hospital medicine right here at St. Ann’s after graduation!