Primary care residents spend more than 20 percent of their time during the residency with their patients. The three-year, intensive continuity experience in ambulatory care ensures that residents see the breadth and depth of acute and chronic disease, while building longstanding relationships with their patients. Medical care including diagnosis, observation, treatment and rehabilitation is provided on an outpatient basis.
One of the core goals of the ambulatory care experience is to teach residents to provide continuous, comprehensive care to patients. Throughout the program, residents follow a panel of patients at Bellevue Hospital and Gouverneur Diagnostic and Treatment Center, and serve as these patients' primary care physicians, under the supervision of faculty role models.
Bellevue Hospital and Gouverneur Diagnostic and Treatment Center are the main sites for the residents' personal outpatient practices. The clinics at Bellevue, staffed by 25 full-time primary care internists, handle more than 50,000 patient visits per year, offering experiences with patients of diverse backgrounds and a wide range of illnesses. The preceptor-to-resident ratio at both sites is 1:4. At each site, residents are assigned to one module/team and remain there throughout their years of training. The primary care resident is responsible for all aspects of their patients' care, including screening and prevention, diagnosis and management of medical and psychosocial problems, referral to subspecialty clinics, and decisions to initiate elective procedures or inpatient hospitalization.
