Patient-centered Primary Care
BMC is a founding partner of Boston HealthNet, a network of 15 community health centers through Boston serving more than a quarter-million people annually. Family medicine residents have the privilege of delivering primary care at one of four state-of-the-art Patient-Centered Medical Homes: Codman Square Health Center, NeighborHealth (formerly East Boston Neighborhood Health Center), South Boston Community Health Center, and Greater Roslindale Medical and Dental Center. While each health center is uniquely reflective of the community where it is located, they all feature a breadth of on-site resources such as behavioral health and psychiatry, radiology, vision and dental services, sub-specialty care, and wellness programs, in order to provide comprehensive, patient-centered primary care that empowers individuals to lead healthy lives.
From the first day of training, residents are assigned a panel of patients distributed by age, gender, and diagnosis so that over three years residents are exposed to a broad patient base. This experience is at the core of the residency program. All community health centers are located within the City of Boston and offer diverse patient populations, teaching opportunities and learning experiences for residents. First-year residents will care for their panel of patients one to two half-days per week; second-year residents care for their panel of patients two to four sessions per week, and third-year residents three to five times per week. Residents are responsible for patients in whatever setting they present, whether office, home, or tertiary care center. This orientation also extends to addressing unmet health care needs in our community, including coordination with schools, churches, and industry, and conducting innovative outreach to vulnerable populations. A strong emphasis is placed on the active management of patients within integrated service systems, especially as they apply to the needs of the undeserved.
Inpatient Adult Medicine
In this video you will hear about the structure of our Family Medicine-run Inpatient Medicine Service at Boston Medical Center, the patient population that our teams care for, the learning that takes place due to inter-disciplinary team support as well as the progressive model of supervision and teaching that our inpatient structure provides.
Codman Square Health Center
NeighborHealth (formerly East Boston Neighborhood Health Center)
South Boston Community Health Center
Greater Roslindale Medical and Dental Center
Off-Service Experiences
This video highlights the experiences and relationships that our Family Medicine Residents have when rotating through non-Family Medicine services.
MCH/OB
Care of birthing people and children are vital pieces of the work that we do in family medicine!
All family medicine residents participate in continuity deliveries, providing a special opportunity to connect with patients and families. Each of our residency training sites offers preconception, prenatal, and postpartum care. Centering Pregnancy group prenatal care is offered at both Codman Square Health Center and Boston Medical Center, and Codman Square also offers Centering Parenting group visits.
On Labor and Delivery, you will be integrated into an interdisciplinary resident team with OB and ED residents. Interns spend two months working on Labor and Delivery (combination of days and nights) with second and third-year residents returning to Labor and Delivery for additional experience. Working closely with family medicine, OB/GYN, and certified nurse midwife attendings, you will have the opportunity to participate in a variety of approaches to birth care.
You will gain experience in low-risk labor management and births, as well as high-risk obstetrics care with our Maternal Fetal Medicine clinicians. We have an amazing team of family medicine clinicians working on Labor & Delivery, including multiple attendings with operative fellowship training who perform cesarean deliveries. Boston Medical Center has a high volume of deliveries (close to 3000 births/year) and plenty of opportunities for learning. The expectation is for residents seeking OB competency to participate in at least 80 vaginal births, with a minimum of 20 vaginal births for residents seeking OB-exposure.
We have a busy Postpartum Family Medicine Team that focuses on postpartum care of dyads, and you will also spend time on the Curbside Care Van providing outpatient dyad care outside of patient's homes. We care for many patients with complex social and medical challenges, including opioid use disorder. You will gain expertise in caring for infants with neonatal abstinence syndrome. Boston Medical Center is proud to be a long-standing Baby-Friendly hospital, celebrating our 25th anniversary in 2025. There is a strong focus on breastfeeding support, and our Breastfeeding Equity Center was co-founded by a family medicine faculty member who is a former graduate of our residency program.
Our department is strongly committed to training family doctors who are well-prepared to continue providing family centered perinatal care upon graduation.
Reproductive Health
All residents gain experience in providing women's health and contraception in their continuity clinics and have exposure to the full spectrum of reproductive health care during their intern year Gynecology rotation. During their PGY2 & PGY3 year residents interested in gaining advanced experience in reproductive health can opt to participate in a structured reproductive health elective as well as additional sessions with a Family Medicine provider in the gynecologic procedures unit. Some residents have also opted to arrange away electives to further advance their reproductive health skills.
Wellness
As a program, we recognize that the three years of residency can be quite stressful. We have implemented teaching and programs to try and ease that stress. These include support groups for each class, regular Balint groups, facilitated sessions to support communication and support on our in-patient team, mindfulness training and other modalities, an advisor and mentoring system, and frequent behavioral health teaching and support. In addition, each resident is encouraged to set up appointments with a primary care physician and the program helps interested residents adjust their schedules to access individual counseling. We, your advisors and other faculty collaborate to assist each resident's professional and personal growth and development; together we commit to help each resident's journey to become well-rounded, happy and healthy family doctors.
Global Health
Point-Of-Care Ultrasound (POCUS)
The Family Medicine Residency is committed to teaching and implementing Point-Of-Care Ultrasound (POCUS) longitudinally over three years of training, spanning both inpatient and outpatient settings. At Boston Medical Center, we have a robust and collaborative team of POCUS experts within our own Family Medicine Department and across Internal Medicine, Emergency Medicine and OBGYN Departments who contribute to resident POCUS education. Specific learning opportunities include bimonthly inpatient "Ultrasound Rounds", hands-on POCUS learning during protected resident didactic time, voluntary participation in monthly POCUS clinics, optional two-week POCUS electives and many other POCUS learning opportunities from ongoing partnerships both within and outside our hospital system. Our Emergency Medicine Department also has a one-year Ultrasound Fellowship that is open to Family Medicine applicants and is comprised of didactic and hands-on POCUS learning experiences through the Emergency Department as well as direct patient care in the Family Medicine Department. At BMC, we believe POCUS is an opportunity to improve health equity for our patients, as it reduces medical costs, radiation exposure, imaging delays and time to diagnosis while improving patient satisfaction and trust. Our POCUS Curriculum helps make our graduating residents leaders in the field of Family Medicine.