Focus Sessions, Community Medicine, and Didactics

Focus Sessions

Throughout their PGY2 and PGY3 years, each primary care resident has focus sessions built into their "+2" ambulatory blocks. Focus sesssions are longitudinal elective experiences that residents get to choose. These sessions allow residents to explore areas of interest, build new skills, and develop clinical niches. Some of the areas in which residents have chosen to focus include addiction medicine, psychiatry, dermatology, East/West medicine, gender health, HIV care, geriatrics, street medicine, asylum training, nutrition/obesity medicine, PM&R, palliative care, outpatient procedures, and public health. If there is not an existing focus session in an area a resident wishes to explore, residents can design their own experiences with the help of program leadership. Residents can also opt to use this time to pursue research and other scholarly work.

Focus sessions are opportunities for residents to gain exposure to specific interests. Our residents have a wide variety of interests including ultrasound and outpatient procedures.

Community Medicine

During the "+2" ambulatory weeks, interns have scheduled Community Medicine sessions. These experiences allow them to learn first-hand about community resources available to their patients. They participate in site visits around Los Angeles.  

Kelly Chueng (2nd from the Left), Senxi Du (3rd from the Right), and Josh Jiang (2nd from the Right) learn more about Chrysalis, a nonprofit organization that help unhoused and low-income individuals create a pathway to self-sufficiency through providing support needed to find and retain employment.

Outpatient Didactics

Outpatient didactic sessions are held on Wednesday mornings during "+2." 

Primary Care Didactics: These sessions are led by the UCLA Primary Care Chief Resident. They are dedicated small group didactics with fellow primary care residents and include faculty lectures, hands-on skills workshops (IUD placement, ultrasound skills, and more!), board review, case teaching, and more. Interns participate in site specific didactics at Olive View or the VA-HPACT clinic. 

Outpatient Medicine Review (OMR): Primary care residents attend these sessions alongside categorical residents (who are on their "+1" ambulatory weeks). They include outpatient medicine lectures, board review, quality improvement curricula, and programmatic updates led by the UCLA Ambulatory Medicine Chief Resident.

Thais Salles Araujo (Left), Phillip Chen (Center), and Ruth Miranda (Right) learn how to place IUDs in Primary Care Didactics.