 "Photo: Brian C. Pitts Jr. / For The South End")
The Wayne State University School of Medicine last month held a groundbreaking ceremony at Crittenton Hospital for a new facility that will house the family-medicine residency program.
After the Detroit Medical Center chose not to renew contracts with the School of Medicine for the residency program, the medical school had to locate a new home for the program. Crittenton was the logical choice, because it did not have any other residency programs on site, according to chief medical officer Frank Sottile.
Without any current residency programs, resident physicians have no competition with other programs. With family-medicine training programs, physicians get general training in internal medicine, surgery, dermatology, orthopedics and more, he said.
The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education approved the Crittenton family-medicine residency program for 24 resident physicians when the facility opens on July 1, 2008, according to Sottile. Seventeen residents stayed in the program and transferred from the DMC to Crittenton.
"We are recruiting for our first class as a new program," Sottile said. "We have received 800 applications for only eight available openings."
According to Sottile, Crittenton and the medical school have an outstanding relationship, because many of its physicians are WSU graduates.
The Crittenton Hospital Medical Center Foundation recently committed significant funding to a simulation-training center at the new medical school building on campus. The simulation-training center will provide resident physicians an opportunity to work hands-on with computer-simulated situations for a more thorough training process.
"There are many ways the two parties can collaborate and make each other stronger in its partnership," Sottile said.
In addition to the family-medicine program, Crittenton agreed to support the Ear, Nose and Throat residency-training program that was also discontinued by the DMC. Crittenton Hospital Medical Center is located at 1101 West University Drive in Rochester Hills.
