Didactics

Our major time for didactics is our "Half-Day Conference" (aka HDC), every Tuesday, from 1 PM - 5 PM. This is a brief description of the major content of these sessions (different activities occur on different Tuesdays).

• Family Medicine Essentials - lectures on primary care topics taught by both primary care faculty and clinical sub-specialists.
• Procedure time - sessions for teaching ambulatory and inpatient procedures (e.g. POCUS, central line placement, and intubation).
• Community and Population Health - a curriculum of lectures, group discussions and community outreach centered on building a strong connection with local community and non-profit organizations.
• Tips, Tricks and Inbasket - sessions led by our Electronic Medical Record (EPIC) superusers and outpatient faculty aimed at enhancing skills using our EMR system. Focus is also placed on preparing residents for their inbasket cross-coverage duties in their 2nd and 3rd years.
• Balint Groups - sessions led by certified Balint instructors using a standard small-group format to assist residents in exploring with their colleagues challenging clinical experiences.
• Patient-Centered Communication - a curriculum of lectures and small-group activities led by our behavioral health faculty and outpatient core faculty, aimed at refining interpersonal communication styles and clinic efficiency.
• Primary Care Thriving Skills - a curriculum led by outpatient faculty and ancillary outpatient team members (nursing, care team, support staff), aimed at teaching systems-based practices for providing care to patients.
• Structured Computer Time - sessions led by core faculty who review and assist residents with professional administrative tasks (e.g. licensing, board certification, and other required tasks). The sessions also include career-building workshops.
• Wellness Activity Time - group activities that build resident and faculty community bonding.
• All-Resident Meetings - sessions led by chief residents and core faculty to discuss major residency updates or have resident-faculty dialogues.
• Quality Improvement - lectures and discussions exploring quality improvement skills that learners can apply to their patient care and clinical careers

This is our health system's provider didactics (similar to grand rounds in other systems) which includes clinical topics as well as topics that would benefit all health care providers such as wellbeing, finance, etc. We have speakers from Contra Costa, including our residents, and outside speakers, who provide lectures and educational hands-on sessions. In the near future, we hope to roll out a formal simulation lab to practice important procedures and clinical situations.

Residents engage in scholarly work and present this work during Noon Conference. These activities provide residents with an opportunity to research, develop, and present evidence-based best practices.  Residents present in their R2 and R3 academic years:

• R2s review and present an evidence-based article and facilitate a journal club for their peers and colleague
• R3s lead a morbidity and mortality conference where guest experts are invited to promote academic discussion

OB: Every morning after board sign-out, there is a morning didactic, for one hour, led by one of the OB/GYN attendings. Common topics are covered, such as gestational diabetes, postpartum hemorrhage, and hypertensive disorders of pregnancy.

Hospital Medicine: Residents on these rotations attend a didactic every weekday morning for one hour. The didactics are given in various formats, including PowerPoint lectures, case discussions, hands-on simulations such as code blues, and are taught by our hospitalist attendings and some of the specialists. Once a block, there is a psychologist-led support group to process difficult patient cases or other challenging situations that residents encounter.

ICU: Every afternoon, an ICU attending or the hospitalist on the service presents a lecture. Residents have a standard set of topics that are covered throughout their rotation, to ensure that all ICU topics are covered, including simulations.

Night Rotations: Each night shift, if time and patient care permit, residents are given a lecture by the hospitalist. These occur in various formats including standard lectures and procedure reviews. 

Wednesday PM Didactics - Our preceptors lead a series of interactive, evidence-based didactics about common topics encountered in family medicine clinic. These didactics occur before the start of every Wednesday PM clinic.

Monday AM Didactics - These are similar didactics (occurring every other Monday before the start of clinic), but they are targeted toward interns. They provide our senior residents an opportunity to teach didactic sessions. The senior residents teach the great majority of these sessions.