RUHS Launches New Residency

MORENO VALLEY >> Riverside University Health System is launching a new Clinical Pharmacy Residency and bringing an established Neurosurgery Residency program to Riverside County on July 1 as part of its commitment to improving regional health care and patient safety. “We are generating quality medical education and clinical experiences that produce community-minded physicians and outstanding health care professionals,” said Dr. Arnold Tabuenca, chief medical officer at RUHS Medical Center. By adding Clinical Pharmacy to its lengthening roster of sponsored residencies, RUHS is answering a need for pharmacists who are equipped to fulfill greater demands in patient care, medication safety and population health management. The residency at RUHS Medical Center is an outgrowth of the robust Clinical Pharmacy program already under way there, Program Director Christina Qi said. “Traditionally the public thinks of pharmacists as doling out pills and advice from behind a counter at the neighborhood drug store,” said Qi, a clinical pharmacist. “We are instrumental in improving health outcomes through the appropriate use of prescribed medications and careful assessment of patients and clinical records. We are here to optimize outcomes and safeguard against errors. Throughout our hospital and clinics we interface directly with doctors and patients.” For example, a clinical pharmacist is permanently stationed in the Medical Center’s busy pediatric ward, which houses Riverside County’s only pediatric intensive care unit. The specially trained pharmacists are critical to the Medical Center’s top-notch stroke and sepsis intervention programs, in addition to diabetes and congestive heart failure management. Clinical pharmacists administer and oversee the powerful and expensive drugs that cure once-deadly liver diseases in RUHS’s Center of Excellence for the Treatment of Hepatitis B and C. This year alone more than 500 medical residents will train in 25 specialties at the Moreno Valley-based Medical Center and RUHS’s Behavioral and Public Health clinics. The health system delivers about a half million hospital admissions and clinic visits annually throughout Riverside County. Tabuenca, a general surgeon whose residency included a rotation at RUHS Medical Center, said he is inspired each July as new residents fill the hallways. “I meet young physicians who are just learning to tie surgical knots," Tabuenca said. "Five years later they graduate as highly skilled surgeons to whom I would entrust my own life and the lives of my family." July 1 will also see longstanding residency programs returning from the University of California, Riverside back to the direct sponsorship of RUHS, including the prestigious Family Medicine Residency. That program was established by RUHS in the 1970s and was the first Family Medicine Residency in California to be accredited by the Council for Graduate Medical Education. Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in San Bernardino County is transferring its Neurosurgery Residency to RUHS in a move that will allow that program to successfully transition from an osteopathic (D.O) residency to an allopathic (M.D.) program. Currently, the American Osteopathic Association and the Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education maintain separate accreditation systems for allopathic and osteopathic educational programs. By 2020 all osteopathic programs must convert to allopathic residencies and a single-accreditation program with common milestones and competency measures. So far, the Anesthesiology Residency sponsored by RUHS is one of just two such osteopathic programs to successfully transition to the ACGME program. Medical residents will have rotations throughout RUHS’s hospital and clinics as well as at partner institutions such as Arrowhead Regional Medical Center, Kaiser Permanente Fontana Medical Center, Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, St. Bernardine Medical Center and Redlands Community Hospital. “Our goal is to provide training and patient-care experiences that produce the highest caliber of physician leaders and community members,” said Jennifer Shieck, program manager in RUHS Graduate Medical Education Office.