Director’s Welcome
Dear Colleague,
I am delighted at your interest in the Alaska Family Medicine Residency. More than 20 years ago, Providence Alaska Medical Center, with the help of the state of Alaska, the federal government, the University of Washington School of Medicine, the Alaska Native Medical Center and a number of other state and regional agencies created our dually accredited residency to attract future family physicians such as yourself. Alaska is an exceptional place to live and work and has an abundance of outdoor recreation, natural beauty, and the warmth and energy of the Alaskan people.
The Alaska Family Medicine Residency offers educational opportunities among the best in the world. Our program was designed to train physicians for any practice setting, including in medically austere, resource-limited environments. We offer rural Alaska training rotations in some of the most challenging and interesting medical sites in the country. Cultural diversity is a cornerstone of our program, and we work closely with our colleagues in the Alaska Native health care community across the state, and we are honored to have our primary care clinic located in the most diverse city in America.
Larry Smith, MD
Interim Program Director
We envision a practice model where the family physician provides comprehensive care to an entire community, with close relationships to sub-specialists at larger or distant medical centers. As you’ll see from our curriculum we align our training for the family physician who may live and work where there are no major medical centers nor even other specialties. The family physician in Alaska is often the only doctor available for emergency medical care, minor surgical procedures, labor and delivery management and community health in addition to chronic and acute disease management. Our graduates are trained and ready to work in hospitals, offices, nursing homes, and rural emergency departments. We believe preparing physicians for this type of practice also prepares them for virtually any other setting, such as urban or suburban outpatient practice, urban under-served practice, or developing world / international medicine.
We greatly enjoy what we do. Our faculty and residents work in a collaborative and mutually supportive environment, sharing both work and recreation. We feel sure that you will be as excited as we are about the breadth of training and the stimulating educational environment we have created.
Sincerely,
Larry Smith, MD
Interim Program Director