Meet Jessica Burness - Associate Program Director

Hello!  I'm Jess or Jessica. I chair our curriculum committee and am very proud of the work we have done over the years to build a curriculum that centers the resident experience in the Patient Centered Medical Home.  Every proposal for curriculum development and improvement in our residency is either resident-driven or developed with extensive input from the six residents on the curriculum committee.  We meet monthly and invite guests to share ideas and help us brainstorm solutions to concerns raised by residents, to explore innovative ideas for education and clinical experience, including electives, and to strive to meet the goals we set for ourselves each year.  We routinely review resident evaluations of rotations and other elements of the curriculum, such as QI, scholarly project support, practice management, and strategies to maximize continuity and resident engagement in the PCMH. We also plan noon reports, procedure workshops, and our case-based conference series.

 Here are a few of our recent successful projects:

Development and implementation of a clinic-based community-building and training session, affectionally called Special Sauce. This is a monthly afternoon in clinic where lunch is provided to all providers and staff from a local restaurant business. We spend the second half of the lunch hour in community-building exercises open to the whole clinic. We block the first hour of clinic for a small-group training session with residents and faculty focused on rotating outpatient-focused topics such POCUS, approach to the well-child check, or motivational interviewing. Preceptors highlight opportunities in the shortened clinic session afterwards to practice skills.

Development and implementation of five "selectives," structured high-yield electives in core family medicine topics: Behavioral Health, Geriatrics and Palliative Care, Hospital Medicine, Comprehensive Maternity Care and Substance Use Disorders. These all build on strengths of the program and provide high-quality supplementary educational experiences that are "plug-and-play" for residents to schedule.