Spring 2018 :: Contra Costa Regional Medical Center

Spring 2018

Dr. Kristin Moeller
Residency Director

Director's Corner

Staying Connected

Welcome to our new Residency newsletter! We plan to send this out at least twice a year to help connect with everyone who makes up our unique and wonderful community. We will update you on current Residency happenings, as well as highlight the innovative and amazing work being done by residents!

March 16 was match day and I'm basking in the excitement of welcoming talented, diverse new residents to our incredible program. In July, we will post their names, photos and bios on the website. I am excited to share they are from many varying backgrounds and bring rich experiences in community work and leadership to our program.

While our residents change every year with the Match and graduation, some things about our Residency remain steadfast: excellence in clinical training and people from all walks of life who are deeply devoted to our patients and colleagues.

I hope you enjoy our new newsletter. Let us know what information you might like to see in future editions and keep watching our website for updates on the Residency as we welcome the class of 2021.

Kristin Moeller, MD
Director, Contra Costa Family Medicine Residency Program
CCFMR Class of 2003

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Chiefs' Corner

What We Accomplished This Past Year

By Ade Magallanes, Ariel Wagner, Kari Kompaniez, and Naman Shah

Hello, friends! We have had the honor of being your chief residents for the past year. This year brought a great deal of changes to the Residency. As chiefs, we have worked hard to push for needed improvements in the curriculum, while also striving to preserve the broad scope of our training, time spent with our patients at the bedside and developing the clinical and procedural acumen for which Contra Costa grads have always been known. Some exciting changes included:

Transition to a half-day conference, which has helped streamline teaching and improved curricular organization.
Successful switch from half-day to full-day clinics on some inpatient medicine rotations.
Launch of the community and population health curriculum.

We are proud of Contra Costa's reputation for training the most skilled and versatile family medicine physicians in the country. As our chief year comes to a close, we want to take a moment to reflect on some of the core principles that motivated our work as chiefs:

Commitment to full-spectrum training: As ACGME requirements change, we remain proud that Contra Costa is one of the few places where full spectrum training is still emphasized. With so many communities in California, nationally, and internationally lacking adequate access to health care, the need for full-spectrum family physicians and a training program like ours is greater than ever before.

Passion for women's health and advanced obstetrics: We hope that caring for high risk patients and training in surgical obstetrics remains a foundational component of our full spectrum training.

Dedication to underserved: We are committed to providing the highest quality of care for underserved patients here in Contra Costa County.

Strengthening outpatient training: Important improvements in the quality of our outpatient training here at CCRMC & Health Centers over the past three years has been evident and we hope that residents continue to engage in efforts to make this critical aspect of our training even better.

Valuing diversity, equity, and inclusion: We are excited about the Residency's efforts to recruit residents from more diverse backgrounds.

We hope we have demonstrated our commitment to these principles throughout the year and that we have served as effective advocates for our peers. Thanks to everyone for your support, and please join us in congratulating our new chief residents from the Class of 2019: Alex Harsha, Angela Rodgers, Jon Patberg, and Melinda Kong.

Sincerely,

Class of 2018 Chief Residents
(Ade Magallanes, Ariel Wagner, Kari Kompaniez, and Naman Shah)

Developing a New Mission Statement

In 2012-2013, the Residency developed its first mission statement -- a nine-month process that involved residents, faculty and staff. The mission statement that was crafted highlighted our long legacy of training Family Physicians to be prepared to serve patients and communities in any setting, as well as ensuring our residents graduate with the skills to lead in this rapidly changing healthcare environment.

Five years in, the Residency is transforming its leadership structure and developing new core faculty positions. With this transition, it is time to revisit our mission statement and update it.

The process officially began on March 2nd at the All-Resident Retreat where residents and faculty examined our current mission statement and highlighted key pieces that we'd like to include in our next iteration. Despite the organizational mission and our collective commitment to serving a diverse and underserved community of patients, it was noted this was not clearly delineated in our mission statement.

This prompted a meaningful discussion around our collective commitment to not only including the concepts of diversity, equity and inclusion and alliances into our mission statement, but to further identify concrete steps to address these issues in our program and within the broader community we serve. With energy from the residents and leadership from Jenn Shrestha (PGY1) and Angela Echiverri (Staff), the residents have formed a Pipeline & Community Leadership Team to help identify ways to support a more diverse and inclusive Residency, as well as to enhance our involvement in the community.

The resident energy is clearly committed to further establishing these important initiatives and the group involved in developing the new mission statement will ensure that they are highlighted. We will be actively working on this over the next several months.

Half-Day Conference

In July 2017, the Residency successfully started the Tuesday afternoon half-day conference (fondly known of as "HDC"). We spent the previous year planning, with the aim to improve and streamline curriculum, increase communication, and build community. With this core vision in mind, we successfully:

Consolidated the outpatient didactic schedule
Added curriculum for Community Medicine and Population health
Protected and structured time for:
- All Resident meetings
- Administrative tasks
- Scholarly work

We plan to continue to prioritize resident education, enhance coherence between lectures, increase feedback, and create a culture of faculty development. We've received really helpful and positive feedback from residents and faculty and look forward to making ongoing improvements.

The Office

A big thank you to our office staff for keeping us organized and running. They are instrumental in managing our everyday Residency operations, our ALSO courses, Point of Care Ultrasound courses, recruitment events and, of course, the interview season. Thank you!!

Need something from the office? Check our "Contact Us" page