Aviva Health’s Residency Program Welcomes First Full Cohort

Eight new doctors started their rounds of residency in the Roseburg Family Medicine Residency program at Aviva this month and the first class from two years ago is starting their last year making this the first full program. There are now 24 doctors from all over the world who are studying, learning, and serving in Douglas County through the brand new Aviva residency program. Aviva started developing the program, its curriculum, and relationships with partners and was certified by Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education in 2017. “I think we are all very proud that the program has continued to thrive and is at this point of nearing full operations,” Aviva CEO KC Bolton said. “As with many things it seems like just yesterday, we were asked at Aviva to serve as the family medicine practice ‘continuity clinic.’ The new class gives us the ability to understand the full learner experience for each of these doctors. We move, after this year, out of “everything is a first” to being able to lean on experience and established procedures to help us provide the best academic environment for each of them.” They are full-fledged doctors who have been through medical school and are working with limited licenses alongside fully licensed doctors for four weeks at a time in different specialties all around the county to fulfill the requirements of the accrediting organization. Once they meet all the requirements, including four rotations of whichever specialty they want to learn more about themselves, they will take the exams to become board-certified doctors. “We want them to be able to get the education that they need to be prepared but also to make sure that they're meeting the criteria or exceeding the criteria to be able to graduate, take their boards, and practice,” Residency Operations Director Desiree Inglis said. The program puts these new doctors into health centers from in-patient at CHI Mercy Health to serving in the psychiatric unit at the VA Hospital to helping with the many services at ADAPT and many more. Once they finish the program, they will look for jobs, but Inglis and the Aviva program hope they will stay in rural Oregon, if not Douglas County. Finding a doctor often still requires a lengthy application and a potential waitlist. In 2019, there were 75 primary care physicians in the area, making it a ratio 1,480 patients per doctor according to a study done by countyhealthrankings.org. “Rural Oregon is really short on primary care docs and so, having a residency program that has eight new graduates each year, ready to go into primary care and those that train in a rural area, so they have that skill set and that understanding, and they've seen the need, it's really neat to see,” Inglis said. The program trains doctors to be primary care physicians or family doctors, but has a secondary feature of teaching lifestyle medicine, which teaches patients how to care for their health with the way they live their daily lives. “It's really treating the patient well, and providing that patient-centered, affordable, compassionate care and meeting people were they are at and trying to help. Somebody might come in and maybe they've been smoking for 30 years and that they're not ready to quit smoking,” Inglis said. “The residents are learning all these different techniques to kind of help their patients and improve their patient's health. But then also, where are their patients at in their journey and what they want to accomplish with their health. It's like joining arms with each other and making a team effort.” The program interviewed 90 of the 700 applicants and had space for eight. The doctors come from all over the world with diverse backgrounds and trainings. Dr. Simran Waller is on her third year with the program and applied to the program specifically because she wants to practice family medicine, Aviva is a Federally Qualified Health Center, and she wanted to do her residency in a rural location. “I think helping people is like number one, but I think that I feel that health is a right and it's kind of the most basic kind of human necessity to thriving in all areas of someone's life,” Waller said. “So if if you have good health, you can contribute to society. It was definitely one of my top choices because I could see myself staying here in the future and raising my family here and they have a great need for or providers primary care providers.” *** Photo 1: Most of the doctors in Aviva Health's Residency program at a BBQ dinner pose together for a photo. This is the first year the program will have a class in all three years. Photo 2: The new batch of doctors pose together celebrating the launch of their residency. Photo 3: The third-year doctors pose together. This is their final year in the program. In June of next year, they will graduate the program and go on to practice solo. All photos courtesy of Aviva Health's Roseburg Family Medicine Residency.