Welcome to the Family Medicine Residency at Dell Medical School at The University of Texas at Austin. Thank you for your interest and energy to learn more about our residency program, who we are and why we are dedicated to life and learning in Austin, Texas.
Our residency program was established in 1973 and has trained over 300 family physicians. We have established a tradition of providing excellence in clinical training for family medicine residents and medical students. Our training is broad and provides an excellent opportunity to develop skills that allow our graduates tremendous choice in practice opportunities. Alumni work in a variety of settings across the country: public and community health centers, private practice, underserved urban and rural communities, academic medicine, hospitalist medicine, student health, correctional facilities, and urgent and emergency care centers. Some graduates elect to do additional fellowship training and have successfully obtained fellowships in academic medicine, ethics, geriatrics, HIV, hospitalist medicine, obstetrics, palliative care and sports medicine.
The program’s faculty members are dedicated and passionate about teaching. Each faculty member provides a broad scope of care to their patients and brings special areas of interest to their teaching and practices, including women’s health, pediatrics, psychology, prevention, public health, HIV/AIDS, hepatitis treatment, medication-assisted treatment for opiate use disorder, procedural skills, sports medicine, global health, inpatient medicine, population health, practice management and quality improvement. Many of our faculty members have completed additional training or a fellowship in academic medicine and faculty development, adolescent medicine, geriatrics, global health, obesity, sports medicine, tropical medicine or women’s health.
Our residents are a diverse group of individuals dedicated to their education through working collegially with faculty, fellow residents, students and other learners; providing quality patient care; and being devoted to a positive learning environment. They share diverse interests in music, theatre, art, culinary adventures, sports and other recreational activities. Unique educational opportunities available during residency training include the Distinction in Care Transformation training, a sports medicine clinical track and an HIV clinical track (during the R2 and R3 years of training).
All Dell Med residents receive educational training through our monthly interdisciplinary education conferences in the content areas of the Resident as Teachers series and the Advancing Care Transformation series. The RATS curriculum includes educational sessions on creating a positive learning environment, providing constructive feedback, social and emotional learning, personal education plan development and best practices in medical education. The ACT curriculum includes educational sessions in value-based health care, quality improvement, health equity, leadership and teamwork.
Medical student training is also central to our education mission; we see this as a natural extension of our passion for resident education. Dell Med students participate in a two-year longitudinal primary care rotation in our clinic. Our program offers rotational experiences for fourth-year students in ambulatory and inpatient environments, and we are eager to help students create unique experiences that will help prepare them for the rigors of residency and beyond.
Our primary training site is in our Federally Qualified Health Center ambulatory center, the CommUnityCare Southeast Health and Wellness Center. SEHWC is a National Committee for Quality Assurance Level III certified patient-centered medical home where faculty and residents see patients side by side. We provide full-spectrum family medicine services, including care for acute illness and injury, chronic disease management, preventive care, pediatrics, women’s health, ambulatory procedures, social work, behavioral health and psychotherapy, diabetes and nutrition education, pharmacy and telepsychiatry services. SEHWC houses an ambulatory pharmacy residency program through UT Austin’s College of Pharmacy, which provides a variety of services, including diabetes education and anticoagulation therapy monitoring. We have interprofessional teammates who work side by side with us in clinic and provide their expertise for patient care and resident education in the areas of nutrition, pharmacy and case management.
The Family Medicine Residency has been an integral part of the oldest continually operating public hospital in Texas, a hospital that has pioneered many innovations for Central Texas. University Medical Center at Brackenridge celebrated its 125th Anniversary in 2009. In May 2017, the spirit of Brackenridge was transferred to our new teaching hospital, Dell Seton Medical Center at The University of Texas, which is a LEED platinum–certified facility. Our beautiful new teaching hospital holds a special place in the heart of the community and continues to grow in several areas, including academic medicine, trauma services, innovative clinical research and initiatives in patient safety. Our other residency hospital teaching facilities include Dell Children’s Medical Center and Ascension Seton Medical Center Austin. Ascension Seton Medical Center has consistently been recognized for excellence in adult care and was rated No. 1 among 37 acute care hospitals for adults in the Austin metro area on U.S. News and World Report’s highly regarded list of Best Hospitals for 2014-15. This recognition comes as Central Health, UT Austin, Dell Medical School and Ascension Seton work together reshaping the delivery of health care to meet our community’s future needs.
The medical campus will undergo several exciting changes over the next decade, including the construction of a health district; expansion of residency and fellowship training; and opportunities for social medicine, population health and global health electives.
Austin is a community that offers an amazing variety of culture, recreation and entertainment. We proudly claim the title, “Live Music Capital of the World.” Our city celebrates diversity, and multicultural communities are represented in the food, music, theatre and many other cultural activities that are readily available throughout our lovely city. The City of Austin maintains many public pools, parks and hike-and-bike trails for the enjoyment of all its residents.
I arrived in Austin in 1993 to begin my residency at the Central Texas Medical Foundation Family Medicine Residency Program (now Dell Med’s Family Residency at UT) and am proud to be part of a long tradition of family medicine education in Austin. The Family Medicine Residency program has been an integral part of the education of many wonderful family physicians who live, work and contribute so much to our community.
Thank you for visiting with us and taking the time to learn about our program. Please take a few minutes to navigate through our program, and feel free to contact us if you have any questions.
Most sincerely,
Dana Sprute, M.D., MPH, FAAFP
Distinguished Professor, Academy of Distinguished Educators
Associate Professor, Department of Population Health
Division of Family and Community Medicine