NY Funds Medical Training at Rochester Clinic

The University of Rochester Medical Center received a $344,000 state grant for a three-year project to expand and improve training and education of URMC medical students and residents who deliver primary care at Culver Medical Group.

Residents will use mannequins and other tools to learn how to perform common office procedures such as injections to knees and ankles, skin biopsies, and tracheotomy care. The program will focus on the management of complex, chronic diseases that originate in childhood (cystic fibrosis and sickle cell disease, for example), but require well-coordinated care into adulthood.

The Culver Medical Group is a freestanding primary care center owned by the URMC. Its mission is to care for medically underserved people who live in Rochester, by using fresh ideas and innovative, evidence-based approaches to care.

The grant was awarded through the Doctors Across New York Ambulatory Training Program, which is designed to defray the costs of clinical training and placement of physicians. State Health Commissioner Nirav R. Shah, M.D., M.P.H., announced the awards to train 1,000 medical residents and students at 43 community-based sites.

“This project is a great opportunity to reinvigorate the outpatient training experience, with both case-based teaching sessions and hands-on procedural curriculum,” said Robert Fortuna, M.D., M.P.H., co-director of the training grant and an assistant professor of Medicine and Pediatrics at URMC.

Brett Robbins, M.D., serves as program director of the Internal Medicine-Pediatrics residency, and Tiffany Pulcino, M.D., M.P.H., is a co-director of the grant. All three provide full-time care at Culver Medical Group.

The URMC grant is among $10.6 million in total funding awarded to 17 New York health care institutions. Since 2001 the Culver Medical Group has been involved in training medical residents who want to learn about primary care in an outpatient setting. Twenty eight residents work under the supervision of seven Internal Medicine-Pediatrics faculty. Local and national medical students also rotate through the program.

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