More physicians are on the way to care for people across the region, as Northeast Georgia Medical Center (NGMC) learned Friday who is joining the newest class of resident physicians this summer.
The organization’s fifth class spans seven specialties and increases the number of residents in each specialty to:
- 30 – General Surgery
- 60 – Internal Medicine
- 36 – Family Medicine
- 24 – Emergency Medicine
- 12 – Psychiatry
- 12 – Transitional Year
- 4 – Primary Care Track
NGMC also has 12 Cardiovascular Disease fellows and two Hospice and Palliative Medicine fellows working and training, bringing the total number of physician learners to 192. All new residents and fellows begin work on July 1.
In the months leading up to Friday, medical students participating in the National Resident Matching Program applied to residency programs and interviewed at hospitals across the nation. After those interviews, residency programs ranked the students – and students ranked the programs. Both rank lists were plugged into a national database which crunches the numbers to determine which of the students match with NGMC. Those results are released on Match Day, which was Friday.
“This Match Day is particularly exciting as we’re welcoming more inaugural classes, Transitional Year and Primary Care Track,” says John E. Delzell, Jr., MD, MSPH, vice president of Medical Education for Northeast Georgia Health System and Designated Institutional Official for NGMC. “Transitional Year is a one-year program that serves as the clinical base year that precedes advanced residencies in anesthesiology, dermatology, radiology and others, so we’re creating that important pipeline with this program. The Primary Care Track prepares residents to become excellent primary care internists, which continues to be a great need in our region and state.”
Idopise Umana, MD – program director of the Transitional Year residency program – is equally excited for her new residency class.
“The Transitional Year residency just received accreditation in December, so we have been working hard on recruiting and interviewing during the past few months,” says Dr. Umana. “This Match Day is the culmination of many hours of hard work, and I couldn’t be more excited to teach and train our next generation of specialized physicians.”
Resident physicians are licensed doctors training in a specialty. They train for three to 10 years after medical school, providing patient care and performing procedures under appropriate supervision. They can write orders and prescribe medication. Residents also have educational, testing and evaluation requirements. Their training is overseen by Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education.
“Our residents will work with our faculty, hospital and clinic staff in numerous ways,” says Dr. Delzell. “We look forward to welcoming all our new resident physicians to the local community and introducing them to patients.”
NGMC is working to expand to more than 200 residents across these specialties by 2024. That will make NGMC one of the largest graduate medical education programs in Georgia. The idea is to train the physician leaders of tomorrow right here in Hall County, so that they will stay to practice in this region and the state.
Original source can be found here.
