The Batesville Rotary Club this week heard from Dr. Jordan Weaver with the UAMS (University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences)/ WRMC (White River Medical Center) residency programs in Batesville.
Dr. Weaver said one of the two programs — the Family Medicine program starts in 2019, and there will be six residents in each year class, building up to 18 in three years.
“They have 10 residency slots per year, so there’ll be 30 residents, and we’ll have the 18, so 48 residents at the full capacity,” said Dr. Weaver. “That’s 48 physicians, in training, in a town of 10,000, and that’s a pretty remarkable thing. That’s just not done outside of big cities and academic medical centers. But we’re really happy that we’re able to do that in a community-based program. Kind of the mission of UAMS is to set up these training centers because what determines where someone practices is where they do their residency. So, usually within 50 miles, the majority of those doctors will practice within 50 miles of that residency program. We want to be able to train and retain our own.”
Dr. Weaver said the other program is teaching Internal Medicine, and he described the building that will house the residency programs.
“You may have seen where we’re remodeling next to Hobby Lobby, and we have a spectacular building,” Dr. Weaver told the Rotarians. “We’ve got 24 exam rooms, X-ray, procedure room, conference facilities. We’ve got a place for the residents to have their own offices, and so they’ll be practicing in that clinic and so, that will be what we call the Family Medicine Practice — the Continuity Clinic. They’ll all have their own patient load, which will start out very small.”
Dr. Weaver said the interns will be seeing patients along with an attending physician as they progress through the program.
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