What is a Rural Training Program?
Our Family Medicine rural training program is designed to give residents an in-depth experience practicing medicine in a rural setting, and our mission is to train physicians with an interest in meeting the health care needs in underserved rural communities.
A rural training program is a separately-accredited residency that works with an existing ‘urban’ residency program. Residents spend greater than 50% of their time on clinical rotations and didactic experiences at rural training sites. Like many rural training programs, our program is structured in a 1-2 format, with residents spending their first year in an urban hospital, doing clinical rotations and continuity clinic with residents in our partner urban program. Following the first year of training, our residents spend their second and third years training in rural hospitals and family medicine clinics.
Our program is paired with the UAMS Regional Centers Northwest Family Medicine Residency Program based in Fayetteville, Arkansas. PGY-1 residents will train at Washington Regional Medical Center and conduct their continuity clinics at the UAMS Family Medical Center in Fayetteville. PGY-2 and PGY-3 residents will spend most of their time in neighboring Carroll, Madison, and Boone Counties. Mercy Hospital Berryville serves as the rural hospital, and residents will be assigned to the Washington Regional family medicine clinic in Eureka Springs or to the Mercy family medicine clinic in Berryville for continuity clinic. Residents may also complete rotations with Boston Mountain Rural Health Center in Huntsville, a Federally-Qualified Health Center serving the region.
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Our Family Medicine Residency program has been training new doctors in Northwest Arkansas since the 1970s. This new program is focusing on rural communities.
COVID Vaccination Statement
UAMS mandates COVID-19 vaccination and requests for accommodation or exemption are available. Additionally, some required residency training experiences are only made available at partner facilities who may also mandate vaccination against COVID-19 as a condition for participating in their clinical environments. Requests for accommodation or exemption from such requirements may be available at partner facilities, but are solely at the discretion of those facilities and not UAMS. All UAMS residents and fellows are required to adhere to policies as outlined by UAMS and our partner sites as part of any ACGME-accredited residency training. Failure to adhere to such policies, including policies regarding vaccinations, may impact a resident’s ability to successfully complete a training program.