Department Overview

The Department of Family and Community Medicine is the newest academic department at Tulane, created in 1998 to provide educational, clinical and research leadership in Primary Care and ambulatory medicine within Tulane University Medical Center and the surrounding community. Family Medicine, established as a distinct discipline in 1969, is a broad medical specialty providing on-going , comprehensive health care for the individual and the family. Family Medicine integrates biological, clinical and behavioral science in order to treat the patient from a biopsychosocial perspective. The scope of Family Medicine encompasses all ages, both genders, each organ system and every disease entity. Also integral to Family Medicine is a focus on evidence-based medicine which allows Family doctors to treat patients using the latest and best evidence available.

The Department of Family and Community Medicine will fulfill its mission through excellence, innovation and commitment to:

• The comprehensive education of Tulane medical students in the practice of ambulatory medicine.
• Residency and continuing medical education programs in primary care.
• The organization and delivery of effective, patient-oriented, primary care services to the community.
• Interdisciplinary collaboration, scholarship and research in the areas of medical education, health services delivery, Family Medicine, and Preventive Medicine.

The Department is actively involved in medical education through both the third-year family medicine clerkship and the transitional residency program. The Family Medicine Clerkship began as a pilot program in 1998-99 and became a required course in 2000. The clerkship, which has been supported in its development by the HRSA grant program, allows third year medical students to have the opportunity to learn ambulatory medicine by working with community based family physicians. These family physicians, called preceptors, are volunteer faculty members who have been recruited and trained as clerkship teachers. Currently, over 170 preceptors, many serving rural or underserved populations, are part of a preceptor network that covers a geographical region within a 300 mile radius of metropolitan New Orleans.

Family and Community Medicine experiences in the fourth year offer medical students an opportunity to become familiar with the complex aspects of the modern medical practice and to participate in a clinical experiences in local and distant community based settings. Elective rotations include Family Medicine preceptorships, international health, occupational and preventive medicine, and hospice care to name a few.

The Preventive Medicine Residency and the Transitional Residency are part of the Department of Family and Community Medicine, and the Department collaborates with all of the Louisiana Family Medicine Residency programs to support their efforts and for student rotations.

New developments in the department include building a distance learning program to allow students and preceptors to access clerkship and continuing education materials from remote locations. In addition, the department is developing a rural medicine program (See the TRuMEd page) with the aim of selectively admitting and guiding students through medical school with the aim of producing badly needed rural primary care practitioners.