Message from the Program Director

I am glad you have come to learn about UIC's Family Medicine Residency. Here is an introduction to our philosophy, direction and resources.

I came into Family Medicine to serve those in need, as individuals, and at a societal level. I came to practice a relationship-based medicine where each patient's care is fitted to his or her own values and goals. I also came to deepen my knowledge of health and disease in America in order to further participate in building a health system for this country.

For the last ten years I have practiced full spectrum Family Medicine and been a member of residency faculty in underserved, urban Chicago. This has been very rewarding to me emotionally and professionally. I have found that I have become not only a skilled medical resource for my patients but also a social, psychological and sometimes a spiritual resource as well.

As Residency Director I now devote my energy to developing the residents of UIC Family Medicine into Family Physicians. As a residency teacher I have learned that residents want, as I do, to be much more than skilled technicians. I believe that most of the good we doctors can bring to our patients is based in the character we have, our sincerity, our compassion and our diligence. Good teachers of Family Medicine guide and support residents to fulfill their higher aspirations as physicians.

Our residency program's greatest resource for training physicians is a highly diverse patient population, drawn from two complementary clinic sites. Mile Square Health Center is a federally qualified Community Health Center providing continuity care to a mix of mostly low-income English and Spanish speakers. The Family Medicine Center on the UIC medical campus serves an ethnically and economically diverse community with an array of medical coverages in a state of the art, all electronic facility.

Our residents are a very diverse, yet remarkably cohesive and mutually supportive group. They have decided themselves to learning and developing together.

The faculty here also represents the diverse spectrum of American Medicine. They each maintain practices alongside our residents in the Family Medicine Centers. Activities of the faculty include obstetrics, procedures, research, teaching, and care for special populations.

UIC hospital provides the benefit of advanced specialty and subspecialty departments for upper level rotations. Within the university medical center we maintain our own "unopposed" Family Medicine inpatient service, including our own adult, pediatric and obstetrical patients and admissions from the emergenal department. We utilize the West Side Veteran's Administration Hospital and Michael Reese Hospital in areas where these sites better meet the needs of our residents.

The broader University provides graduate degree programs, expertise and support for the pursuit of higher educational goals during and beyond residency training.

We have built this program to help you realize your highest potential as a physician, in skill, in wisdom and in capacity to serve. Please join us. We invite you to see if this Residency is right for you.

Sincerely,

Mark Potter, M.D.
Program Director
Family Medicine Residency