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Overview of GME Program Happening at TVH

Dr. Michael Nduati shares how the GME program got started, an overview of the program, and how students are matched.
Overview of GME Program Happening at TVH
Featured Speaker:
Michael Nduati, MD, MBA, MPH
Michael Nduati, MD is An innovative, results-oriented and high-performing executive leader who consistently pushes the boundaries ofsuccess. Proven track record in starting up and building upon new healthcare programs, both clinical and educational. Played a crucial role in the development of a new medical school’s clinical enterprise and clinical education curriculum. Has overseenstrategic development and growth of a University of Californiamedical school'sclinical enterprise and servedas the physician executive leader of the medical school's faculty practice.And most importantly, possesses strong team-building leadership abilitieswith a tireless work effort and the utmost integrity.
Transcription:

Melanie Cole, MS (Host): Welcome. Today we’re talking about the exciting GME program happening at Temecula Valley Hospital. My guest today is Dr. Michael Nduati. He’s the chief academic officer for UHS SoCal MEC. Dr. Nduati, I'm so glad to have you with you us today to discuss the GME program that’s happening at TVH. Before we do that, tell us a little bit about what the UHS Southern California Medical Education Consortium is all about, and a little bit about the graduate medical education program in general.

Michael Nduati MD, MBA, MPH, FAAFP (Guest): The UHS SoCal MEC is a consortium of five southern California hospitals under the UHS system. It’s so important because as we all know, there's a huge shortage of physicians in southern California. That’s especially true of southwest Riverside County. That’s not just primary care physicians. There's a huge shortage of specialists and sub-specialists. So the goal of the UHS SoCal MEC is to help bring more physicians that train in the area and then hopefully stay and practice in the area when they're done with their training to help address this shortage and improve the health of the community.

Host: So very needed. So please share with us how the program is started. You mentioned a little bit about providers and the lack of access to certain types of healthcare. So why the need? Tell us about your mission really.

Dr. Nduati:   The mission is pretty straight forward for UHS SoCal MEC. It is to improve the health of the communities that are served by the UHS hospitals that are part of the consortium, which is primarily southwest Riverside County. The program got started—The way you go through the ACGME process, which is the governing board for residency programs, is you have to get institutional accreditation. So that process was started about three years ago. In the fall of 2018, we got institutional accreditation under the consortium. Then we applied for our first two programs—which are family medicine and internal medicine—which got accredited in early 2019. We were extremely fortunate and proud that we fully matched our inaugural class. So we have 20 internal medicine residents and six family medicine residents that started their training this past July 1st. So we have the first year going for those two programs.

We have submitted an application and had a site visit for emergency medicine, which we hope will be accredited in September of this year. We have applied for transitional year and have a site visit coming up actually later this month which we also hope that program will start in July 2020. Then we also have plans for residencies in OB-GYN, neurology, general surgery, and psychiatry. So we intend to keep ourselves busy over the next several years.

Host: How comprehensive. So how did TVH become the host for this program with the sister hospitals?

Dr. Nduati:   All of the hospitals are great hospitals in the consortium. All of the UHS southern California hospital. What we really do is start off with looking at hospital volumes and where there’s a critical mass of faculty that are interested in participating. So it just so happened that for family medicine and internal medicine that it made sense to base those out of Temecula Valley Hospital. Now, there are rotations in both programs—family medicine and internal medicine—also at the two southwest hospitals, Rancho Springs Medical Center and Inland Valley Medical Center. There will be involvement at Corona Regional Medical Center for these two programs as well. For example for OB-GYN, which will be coming up, that one will be based out of Rancho Springs as that’s the pediatric and maternal health hospital for the UHS system in southern California. Temecula Valley has had very high quality since their existence and has started comprehensive programs in cardiology and neurovascular care. So it made sense to base these two programs out of TVH.

Host: How are students matched for the program? What is it you're looking for, Dr. Nduati, when you're interviewing residents and taking them onto the program? What characteristics and qualities are you looking for?

Dr. Nduati: So we’re looking for people who are, number one, going to be good physicians, and number two that we believe will have a commitment to Southern California and the region that we serve. So one of my mentors said that you can take any reasonably intelligent person and you can train them to become a physician, but you can't take a person who doesn’t have a good personality and core value and train them to be a good person. So I take that to heart, and that’s the message that I give my program directors and their core faculty is let’s really start with who do we think are good people who are gonna be good physicians and be able to connect well with their patients. Then we definitely look favorably upon students that are from the local area. Our medical school affiliate partner is Western University and the medical school they have on that campus. So we definitely look for students from Western, from the other local southern California medical schools—UC Riverside, Loma Linda, UC San Diego, UC Irvine. There’s new medical schools popping up as well in southern California, which are much needed.

So we believe that if we take medical students from this area that actually care about this community and want to stay and improve the health of this community, we have a much greater chance of succeeding in retaining them. We’ve established an internal goal for UHS SoCal MEC of 50% of more retention of our residents that we want them to stay and practice in our facility.

Host: What a great mission, Dr. Nduati. So with whom will the residents have the opportunity to work? Tell us a little bit about the faculty and the training and what their days look like,

Dr. Nduati:   I think that’s actually one place where we really shine. The faculty that we have in UHS SoCal MEC are just exceptional. This is the third set of de novo residency programs that I've been a part of launching. Usually there's some trepidation, there's some resistance from the physician medical staff about, “Okay, well what does this mean? How is this going to impact my day to day?” Literally from day one when I got on board there was nothing but excitement from the community physicians and those who wanted to be interested in being clinical faculty and core faculty of the programs. So it’s unlike anything that I've ever seen before in my career and it’s really amazing to participate with people who are so passionate about resident education and contributing to the next generation of physicians. So I would say that’s just an exceptional thing to start with.

We really have an open door policy. So we’ve made it known that residency programs are coming. We have an open invitation for physicians to participate. Obviously for some larger rotations we’ve outreached to groups. So internal medicine wards is obviously kind of the core of the internal medicine residency program. So we’ve outreached to groups and identified a couple main groups for that. Really if you're passionate and you want to teach, and you can show that you have a track record of good teaching then we want you to be involved then. I think what I've learned through my involvement in GME over my career is that once programs get going, it’s a slipper slope in a positive way that everyone wants to get involved. Once they see residents going around with other physicians and how happy they are, the kind of rekindling that joy for medicine, and then obviously some other tangible benefits like recruitment pathways that these residents are eventually going to graduate. Some of these physicians and groups could hire them to work side by side with them as colleagues in the future. So we want everyone who can to be involved with that and reap the benefits of the residency programs, and we’ve had a great response from TVH and the other UHS hospitals participating in the residency programs.

Host: What a great opportunity for those residents. So as we wrap up Dr. Nduati, what does this collaboration help to ensure for the residents and for the community? Tell us how this collaboration is really going to benefit the community and anything else you’d like listeners to take away from this episode.

Dr. Nduati:   I think it really changes the focus of how are we trying to train and produce the next generation of physicians that will benefit Riverside county and the inland empire, and specifically southwest Riverside county. So historically—For example, I went through the UC Riverside UCLA biomedical sciences program. We had medical school in the area, but then for the most part the graduating medical students would go train in residency programs outside of the community. We know that somewhere around 40% of where a physician ends up planting their routes and working to start their career is where they finish their residency training or fellowship training. So none of that was happening in Riverside County and specifically southwest Riverside County. So we trained these wonderful students from the community, send them off to LA county, Orange county—which is great. They get a great education, great training, but then they never came back to serve the community.

So we’re really changing the paradigm of the focuses to train physicians that will stay and practice in the area and address that physician shortage and improve the health in the community. I think when we look downstream 7/10/15 years from now we’re gonna see the enormous positive impact that these residency programs will have.

Host: Thank you so much, Dr. Nduati, for coming on with us and sharing such great information about the residency program and graduate medical education. So important for the community. Thank you, again, that wraps up this episode of TVH Healthchat with Temecula Valley Hospital. Head on over to our website at temeculavalleyhospital.com for more information and to get connected with one of our providers. If you found this podcast informative, please share with your friends and family. Share on social media and don’t miss all the other interesting podcasts in the Temecula Valley Hospital library. Physicians are independent practitioners who are not employees or agents of Temecula Valley Hospital. The hospital shall not liable for actions or treatments provided by physicians. Until next time, this is Melanie Cole.