The University of South Florida Family Medicine Residency Program at Morton Plant Mease prides itself in providing innovative ways for our residents to succeed in their course of study. We utilize state of the art information technology to help our residents perform their jobs more efficiently. We've implemented a Resident Scholar Program to promote a culture of inquiry involving original research and continuous quality improvement projects. We have a nationally recognized longitudinal Leadership Curriculum designed to help our residents balance their professional and personal lives. Lastly, we've achieved National Committee for Quality Assurance recognition as a Patient Centered Medical Home. As you can see, we never stop striving to improve our program for the benefit of our residents.
In 2020 the ACGME required all family medicine residency programs to include advocacy as a required resident milestone, to ensure that all newly trained family physicians can use their voice to speak to the concerns of patient populations and for family medicine as a discipline. In response to this, we created a more robust and immersive longitudinal advocacy curriculum for our residents.
The goals of our 2-year longitudinal advocacy curriculum are:
Four advocacy symposium events, scheduled on a 2-year rotation, with two symposiums per academic year. Symposium topics to include:
One of our significant innovations and values is our focus on our community and our training within the community setting. The residency, as well as the Turley Family Health Center was conceived as a way to prepare physicians to become part of a local community and to embrace the philosophy of community leadership and responsibility.
By having our office space and family medicine clinic in the heart of a local underserved area, we have become an integral part of this community. This institutional mission is one that we hope will attract like-minded residents to our program as well as guide our graduates once they leave the residency for their own practices.
Local Community Outreach
Our program often works throughout the local community to serve the needs others. Every year our providers perform free back-to-school and pre-participation physicals at the Greenwood Community Center and Palm Harbor University High School. Annual community blood pressure and skin cancer screenings are also performed by our resident and faculty physicians. We routinely see patients at La Clinica Guadalupana, where they provide free medical care for mostly Spanish-speaking financially needy individuals. Teaching community outreach is also an important part of our program, which occurs during activities such as resident supervision of students at the USF Bridge Clinic, activities included in our global health/medical mission curriculum, and also during our suturing workshops at Countryside High School. For providers interested in sports medicine, we often provide medical coverage for athletic events like the IRONMAN triathlon, St. Anthony’s Triathlon, Disney Marathons and others.
International Medical Mission Trips
Residents interested in International and Travel Medicine can learn more by participating in our Global Health/Tropical Medicine curriculum. As a USF residency program, we often collaborate with the USF College of Medicine to support their global health projects and initiatives. Every year our program provides funding for two of our residents to participate in the USF Project World Health mission trip to the Dominican Republic, alongside our faculty. Our residents have participated in outreach programs to Africa, Haiti, Dominican Republic and other locations across the globe.
Morton Plant Mease Health Care Foundation
For more than 40 years, Morton Plant Mease Health Care Foundation has provided philanthropic support to the not-for-profit hospitals of Morton Plant Mease Health Care, including Morton Plant, Clearwater; Mease Countryside, Safety Harbor; Mease Dunedin and Morton Plant North Bay, New Port Richey. The close connection between the hospitals of Morton Plant Mease and their neighbors reveal a unique spirit of giving – a relationship characterized by people caring for the hospitals that care for them.
Our outpatient family medicine center is state of the art in educational and patient care informatics. Housing two telecommunication conference rooms, live video conferencing is readily available. All electronic media are available for speakers.
With over 100 desktop computers, residents can access the internet from numerous locations throughout the center. Each workstation has access to numerous full-text, medical literature and evidence-based medicine resources. A private virtual connection links us to the University of South Florida and all of its electronic resources. In addition, our center and hospital support wireless technology.
All incoming residents are given iPhone devices for work related use. Via these devices, residents can access their BayCare e-mail accounts that wirelessly sync in real time, communicate via cell phone calls and text messaging, and access patient care and educational information via various applications and the internet – all at no cost to residents.
We have an outpatient electronic medical record (EMR), Cerner Ambulatory, with a desktop computer and thin screen monitor in every exam room. Medication refills are just a click away via e-prescribing. The EMR also checks for drug intolerances and drug-drug interactions enhancing patient safety. Most laboratory and radiology results automatically flow into provider electronic inboxes improving our efficiency and customer service. In our family medicine center we also are able to directly access important information from patient hospitalizations such as histories and physicals, laboratory and radiology results, and discharge summaries via BEACON, our Cerner inpatient electronic medical record.
We pride ourselves on being information technology leaders in the health care industry. Our progressive approach and supportive health system allow us to be the flagship in many of these areas.
Integrative Medicine (IM) is a holistic, patient-centered approach to medicine that strongly emphasizes a collaborative patient-practitioner partnership. It addresses all aspects of a patient’s health, including physical, emotional, social, and spiritual. It utilizes any appropriate and evidence-informed modalities and therapies that may contribute to a patient’s healing and achieving optimal wellness.
The USF-MPM Family Medicine Residency is the only Family Medicine residency in Florida to offer IM training through the University of Arizona’s Integrative Medicine in Residency program. This track is offered to PGY-2 and PGY-3 residents. Residents work through a competency-based, interactive, online curriculum at their own pace, getting additional training and advancing their skills in topics like:
Residents and IM faculty also meet regularly throughout the year to discuss topics and participate in group activities like acupuncture, Reiki, and yoga.
With the changing role of physicians in today's health care environment, residency programs have a responsibility and obligation to teach far beyond the fundamentals of direct patient care. We must teach, role model and encourage a culture of community responsibility and physician leadership.
Consequently we have developed and implemented a curriculum to provide residents with the foundation and tools necessary to become the well-rounded and responsible healthcare professionals of tomorrow.
The overarching goal of the Leadership Curriculum is to establish a supportive and fun culture where hard work is rewarded and professionalism developed and celebrated.
Towards these goals several residency activities and events are scheduled throughout the residency experience. These include New Resident Team Building Day, Residency Support Groups, Intern Out Day, Halfway Home Day, and Almost Done Days.
New Resident Team Building Day
A full day of social and physical interaction activities designed to acquaint the new PGY-1 resident class with each other and with faculty. It's a day during a busy orientation process to get outdoors, put things in perspective and to have some fun.
Residency Support Groups
These occur monthly in the first year of residency and less frequently in the PGY-2 and PGY-3 years. These group meetings are designed to allow residents an ongoing forum for team building, problem solving and skills training.
Intern Out Day
This occurs mid-year in the PGY-1 year. This scheduled full-day away from all residency responsibilities addresses the question, "Who are we and how do we work best together?" The focus is on team building, cohesion development and stress management. It is also the celebration of completing over half of the most difficult year of postgraduate medical education.
Halfway Home
Addresses the question, "Who am I as a health care professional and how do I balance the various roles in my life?" and occurs in the first half of the PGY-2 year. The focus is on individual growth and development with recognition of the individual attributes that contribute to the collective "whole" of the health care professional. The day also serves to celebrate the individual's completion of half of their postgraduate medical education while simultaneously addressing skills and attitudes relating to how to balance the competing issues of family, finance, physical, spiritual, personal and professional well-being.
Almost Done Days
Planned for the last quarter of the PGY-3 year. This activity addresses the question, "What is my potential and how can I use my gifts and talents to fulfill my potential and contribute to my profession and my community?" This is an exercise in leadership development and is meant to stimulate and motivate soon-to-be graduates to face the future with determination and purpose.
USF-MPM FM Residency - Resident Leadership Track (RLT)
The Resident Leadership Track’s mission is to train family medicine residents to embrace leadership as a tool to effect changes in health care delivery, and to improve the community of patients they serve.
Leadership Track Goals:
Tools for Accomplishing Goals:
In the past three years we have developed and continued to refine our Point of Care Ultrasound (POCUS) Curriculum here at the residency program. The goal of our curriculum is to ensure that all interested residents have ample opportunity to get exposure to, and some proficiency in POCUS. POCUS in a great tool in patient care, however, it is a “long, gradual learning curve” that often requires additional CME for proficiency.
Our curriculum includes:
A major innovation of our residency program is our ample elective rotation experience and flexibility in designing rotation electives. Residents receive 19 weeks throughout their residency to do elective rotations, one of the most liberal elective rotation policies in the country.
Residents are able to tailor their elective rotations to their post residency interests and goals all with faculty mentoring and support. While our residents may choose from a wide variety of existing electives in common areas (endocrinology, sports medicine, hospitalist care, hospice and palliative care, etc.), a number have created their own unique rotations! Our residents have participated in eye-opening clinical electives to other countries, they have explored indigent care through inner city street medicine, others have submersed themselves in intense research projects, while others have developed formal business plans for their future practices — each with guidance and support from well-qualified and experienced residency and community attending faculty.
While working at the Turley Family Health Center, residents gain experience in foundational concepts and principles of family medicine. We also have several specialty clinics on site that allow our providers to care for patients and families in a comprehensive team-based manner, while demonstrating to our residents a wide variety of ambulatory procedures and services.
The Women’s Center
For more than 20 years, the Women’s Center has been serving the health care needs of women in our community, through generations and throughout all phases of their lives. Our obstetrical team and resident physicians deliver more than 350 babies every year. We offer full spectrum prenatal and midwifery services. Our Cesarean section rate is below the national average. In addition to prenatal and postpartum care, we offer routine well woman exams, breast exams, mammogram referrals and cervical cancer screening, colposcopy, LEEP, endometrial biopsy procedures, contraception counseling and management including LARC (long acting reversible contraception) options, STD testing and treatment.
Geriatrics Workforce Enhancement Program (GWEP) Clinic
GWEP clinic was established with the support of a HRSA grant to enhance our geriatrics curriculum. Residents work alongside our core faculty in a multi-disciplinary team to gain hands-on experience caring for geriatric patients. Emphasis is placed on addressing the often complex physical, cognitive and psychosocial needs of older adults. Residents hone their skills in management of acute and chronic health conditions as well as appropriate preventative care for our elderly patients. Through the GWEP grant, we developed an innovative program that coordinates medical with social services for vulnerable elder patients, via a bi-directional referral process with the Area Agency on Aging of Pinellas-Pasco.
Sports Medicine Clinic
At the Turley Family Health Center, we are fortunate to have two sports medicine trained faculty who hold weekly sports medicine clinics at our facility. PGY-2 and PGY-3 residents see patients alongside the sports medicine faculty and our sports medicine fellows during their orthopedic and sports medicine rotations. We care for patients and athletes of all professional levels by referral to our clinic. Sports-related concussions, common orthopedic conditions, and joint injections, with and without ultrasound guidance, are a few services provided in our sports medicine clinics.
Weight Management Clinic
Our clinic site has a dedicated weight management program designed to help our continuity patients manage their obesity-related comorbidities, utilizing physician-guided weight loss tools and methods. This is a unique opportunity for PGY-2 and 3 residents to work one-on-one with core faculty, while meeting a need in our underserved community. Residents learn to apply the four pillars approach when managing obesity – diet, exercise, behavioral modification and pharmacotherapy.
Procedure Clinic
Florida is known as “The Sunshine State,” and with that comes a multitude of skin abnormalities. Procedure clinic is a hands-on specialty clinic providing our residents the opportunity to learn procedures family physicians should be able to perform in their offices. Working one-on-one with our core faculty, residents become proficient in common dermatologic procedures, which include punch biopsies, shave biopsies, cryotherapy, toenail removal, lipoma and sebaceous cyst excisions, as well as excision of most skin cancers.
Chronic Care Management (CCM) Clinic
Successful chronic disease management is a cornerstone of family medicine, and the most effective family physicians master the use of inter-professional collaboration to improve the quality of care for patients with chronic medical problems such as diabetes and COPD. Our CCM clinic program includes a family medicine senior resident, a pharmacist, a dietician and a case manager all working together to provide team-based support for our most challenging population of patients with markedly uncontrolled chronic medical problems.
Behavioral Medicine Clinic
Residents and faculty are able to refer patients with behavioral health concerns for evaluation, counseling and/or medication management. Residents work with a core faculty Clinical Psychologist who is also a Physician Assistant in Family Medicine and Psychiatry, and they also work with a Licensed Mental Health Counselor. Residents learn how to practice biopsychosocial medicine in a truly integrated clinical environment. Our family medicine clinic has been recognized as a Patient Centered Medical Home with Distinction in Behavioral Health Integration.
Pharmacy Clinic
With the complexities of medication management, a team approach to patient care increases the likelihood of positive clinical outcomes. Residents and faculty refer patients to our Pharmacy Clinic for consultation in chronic disease management, as well as evaluation of polypharmacy, drug-drug interactions and adverse drug reactions. Consultation provides an opportunity to explore factors that affect patient adherence to and time to provide in-depth education. PGY2 and PGY3 residents rotate in the Pharmacy Clinic to share in this experience.
The goal of the telemedicine curriculum is to ensure that our residents have a foundational understanding of this expanding healthcare delivery model, while also teaching them advanced remote patient care techniques and progressive patient care models through a wide variety of hands-on telehealth learning opportunities.
Our healthcare system, BayCare, has numerous well-established and expanding telehealth programs our residents participate in including video telemedicine acute and chronic care visits, eICU, eSNF, telehealth wound care, remote/ mobile patient monitoring, and other novel methods of healthcare delivery.
As innovation in care delivery and technology continues to transform family medicine, we must ensure that our current and future family physicians have all the available tools and resources they might need to provide the best possible care for their patients.
Welcome to the University of South Florida-Morton Plant Mease Wilderness Medicine Track. Wilderness medicine is defined as the practice of medicine in austere, resource constrained and possibly remote environments. The skills taught by our Track promote knowledge and understanding in wilderness medicine, pre-hospital care, disaster medicine, international and travel medicine and tactical medicine. This track is offered to PGY-2 and PGY-3 Family Medicine residents and runs longitudinally over both years. Interns may participate if their schedule allows.
Your educational experience will start with didactic lectures. However, wilderness medicine cannot be taught in the classroom alone. We will spend most of our time outdoors building on core topics learned.
There are five longitudinal components that all residents will complete:
The four didactic modules cover mountain medicine, desert medicine, tropical medicine and dive and marine medicine. These modules will give the resident the required knowledge and technical skills to competently practice wilderness medicine. Each module is taught through weeklong seminars conducted by USF-MPM Family Medicine faculty. Each of these modules will have required reading from Auerbach’s Wilderness Medicine, additional texts and key articles from medical literature. These modules will all have associated field, experiential education and research requirements. Through the experiential aspect of the track, all residents will gain hands-on clinical experience. This will develop and hone their technical and leadership skills.
The USF-MPM Family Medicine Residency program is the first and only Family Medicine Residency in Florida to conduct Advanced Wilderness Life Support (AWLS) training. Training is provided by three core faculty certified as Lead Instructors and various subject matter experts. All residents in the track will complete AWLS certification. However, this opportunity is open to all residents and faculty.
