More physicians will soon be working with Piedmont Health patients while completing the residency program at the Prospect Hill Community Health Center.
The Teaching Health Center Family Medicine Residency Track at Piedmont Health’s Prospect Hill Community Health Center officially started in July 2012 with two residents. Prospect Hill now has two second-year residents and two third-year residents. Program administrators plan to add two first-year residents during the next year.
The Health Center Family Medicine Residency Track was the first of its kind in the state when it began. Physicians studying under UNC medical school’s Department of Family Medicine spend three years training in the underserved tract.
Successful initiatives like the residency track at Prospect Hill Community Health Center help build UNC medical school’s national reputation, school officials say.
UNC’s medical school is ranked second among the country’s top medical schools, according to U.S. News & World Report magazine’s most recent ranking of graduate schools, announced earlier this year. UNC also ranked second in the nation among university family medicine programs listed by the magazine.
The residency program helps ensure that Piedmont Health’s Prospect Hill Community Center can not only serve more patients, but that patients receive top-notch health care, said Dr. Evan Ashkin, the site director for Prospect Hill’s residency program.
The program’s administrators now interview about 30 to 50 medical students each year for residency spots at Prospect Hill.
“It’s a very competitive process,” Ashkin said. “Most of these students have done all kinds of amazing service in the past.”
(Dr. Miles) – The program’s first two residents were Dr. Mimi Miles and Dr. Christina Drostin. Miles graduated from Southern Methodist University and Eastern Virginia Medical School. Drostin earned her medical degree and a master’s degree in public health at UNC-Chapel Hill.
(Dr. Drostin) – Miles and Drostin both graduated from the residency program in June 2014 and are now board-certified physicians. Both doctors will return to Prospect Hill Community Health Center in August 2014 to serve in precepting roles. As preceptors, Miles and Drostin will supervise residency doctors at Prospect Hill.
A major reason why the Teaching Health Center Family Medicine Residency Track at Prospect Hill was created was to bring more doctors to a rural part of Caswell County. Ashkin said having the program’s first two residents return to help current resident physicians is an example of the program’s success.
“The whole goal is to train doctors who are more likely to stay and work with underserved patients,” he said.