Office of Graduate Medical Education

What makes a doctor, a doctor?

The state of Nevada is home to a close-knit group of passionate and dedicated medical residents; who are actively engaged with their community. The [University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine] of on the growth of Graduate Medical Education. One of the primary factors, in keeping doctors in Nevada.

Martin: Residency is training, that people complete after they graduate from medical school. Lot of people think, you know, go to medical school, you're doctor, you can go out in the world and practice. But, residency is required to receive a medical license to practice medicine, to see patients. So, it can vary from a minimum of 3 years to many more, depending on what someone specializes in, if they pursue fellowship, advanced training. Someone who graduates from medical school is a medical doctor, but they're not licensed to practice medicine, without completion of a training program of some kind. And that's what residency programs are and they range in different types; from family medicine, internal medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, surgery. It's a number of different fields of that people can pursue. The medical school gives you the foundation for all of those, but residency gives you the path that you go down and actually what type of doctor you become.

Man: Plantar Fasciitis, would be another one now that I think about it, it if you wanted to do…

Kuykendall: Residency has a high-stress at times, high work hour demands and you just need that balance to stay sane. Still have your hobbies, still spend time with your friends, spend time with your family is very important, it's as important as doing.

Kuykendall: Alright, so do you feel better since coming into the ER?

Patient: Yeah.

Kuykendall: You look a lot better. We like your blood pressure now. And so, our plan is, we're going to switch you to a different antibiotic that's better for kind of skin problems and then we'll just see how you do.

Kuykendall: What attracted me to the University of Nevada[, Reno] School of Medicine Residency Program was, one, is the city; being in Las Vegas it's a tourist city. So, not only is Vegas already a diverse city, but we have tourists coming in every day from other countries, different cultures and so this is one of the unique cities where you get to see diseases of the world, not just of your state or of your country.

Nurse: Hi, how are you?

Sattarzadeh: Good, how are you?

Nurse: Good. So, this was the patient that I called you about. She's had some bigeminy, she's had some PVC's and some chest pain.

Sattarzadeh: So, the main thing that attracted me to rural medicine was, the fact that as a rural physician it kind of goes back to the traditional role of family physician which was like a general practitioner of old. They were practicing medicine vary widely, they were seeing patients in the hospital, delivering babies, doing surgical procedures because there's nobody else Initially, I was a medical student here at the University of Nevada[, Reno] School of Medicine and I saw how much the attendings cared for our education. Our class size was very small, we had about 62 students per year, whereas most medical schools have 120 to 180 students per year. So, there was a lot of focus on individualized education.

Kracaw: Now, an elliptical incision. Right, just right, carry down through the skin.

Kracaw: Well, this is a rural residency training and what we're trying to do here is to teach all the skills that a physician can use in a rural setting, such as a lot more intensive work and taking care of sick patients in the ER, to do a little bit of basic surgery, to do a little basic obstetrical care and some more comprehensive work in our clinics. What attracted me to rural medicine is, I grew up here, in Winnemucca, and this is my home I had a lot of opportunities to go to other places, but this is a place that really allows a physician to practice full spectrum medicine. You can deliver babies here, you can take care of sick emergency room, you can take care of people that are dying, you can take care of a lot of complications, where things are less boring and routine. But more than anything, it's the people that I know and grew up with here is the people I get to take care of.

Palmer: If we look just at Nevada itself, those individuals who go to the University of Nevada[, Reno] School of Medicine, if they graduate and stay here in the state to do their residency training, 80% of them will actually practice within the state of Nevada. If they go to the University of Nevada[, Reno] School of Medicine, go out of state to complete their family medicine residency training, there's only about a 36% chance that they will come back to Nevada. The whole purpose of having residency spots within a state is to be able to keep them within the own state to serve the population of patients within the location where they do the residency training. Nevada is a state that is under-served. It has an enormous amount of opportunities for physicians, for health care providers, health care workers to really make a difference in the lives of the patients; and that is one of the reasons that I ended up moving here. My heart has always been an academic medicine and in trying to improve the health care and quality that we deliver to patients.