About Our Program

The three-year residency training program in the Department of Family Medicine in the Henry Ford Health System is designed to prepare family physicians for successful careers in a rapidly changing health care environment. Residents are taught the application of broad clinical skills in ambulatory, hospital, home, and community training settings. They gain experience in the application of those skills as practice partners in busy family medicine centers, where patients and families identify them as their primary care providers.

As residents develop their clinical skills, they do so in the context of the biopsychosocial model, guided by principles of individual and family psychodynamics, life cycle, population epidemiology, health care economics, etc. Their training experience, because of the unique educational settings and skills of the faculty, is uniquely strong in preparing them for urban practice and managed care, although graduating residents successfully pursue a wide variety of roles after they complete the program.

The Henry Ford Health System is a unique context in which to undertake family medicine residency training. As one of the largest and most progressive integrated health care delivery systems in the country, residents learn the most up-to-date approaches to clinical practice, such as evidence-based medicine, disease state management, population health, managed care, use of computers in medicine, quality improvement methods, etc. The residency assures that the maximal benefits of this unique setting are optimized for education. Residents emerge from their training extraordinarily well prepared to face the challenges of a changing healthcare environment.

The family medicine-specific aspects of the curriculum emphasize the department’s strengths and achievements in urban clinical practice and research. While residents experience many diverse settings and clinical populations, the department has been uniquely strong in attracting faculty and residents with a special interest in urban practice. The practices which have become the primary ambulatory training sites are vital to the Detroit community for their roles in improving health status where morbidity and mortality rates often exceed national norms. The high level of acuity and historically inadequate access to compassionate and competent health care mean that residents make a significant difference in the lives and well-being of their patients even while they are in training. The challenges inherent in these experiences mean that residents are even better prepared to assume responsibility as family physicians, no matter where they practice.