Dear Potential Lawrence Family Medicine Resident,
Joseph W Gravel,Jr, MD Residency Director
Our goal is to provide the best family medicine residency training in the country and to train the best primary care physicians in the world and for the world- nothing less. We believe we are not training people to be great residents for us for the next three years but rather for them to be great family physicians for their patients and communities long after graduation. To do this requires lots of attention to not only the curriculum but also to our residents’ quality of life, as highly effective physicians must have highly effective support systems and well-rounded personal lives to thrive in the long run.
Given that the US currently has over 35 million people who speak Spanish, a number that is rapidly growing, we believe it will be increasingly difficult to provide healthcare for underserved populations in the future without fluency in Spanish. Increasing globalization also necessitates that primary care physicians with an interest in international medicine learn Spanish. At graduation from our program you will be a superb family physician who has the additional valuable skill of “cultural competency” as you will live it each day. While it is not necessary to know any Spanish upon entering the program, the residency provides an intensive Spanish immersion course at the beginning of the first year followed by ongoing on-site support, 1:1 Spanish lessons, as well as numerous well-organized international experiences. By the end of your first year of residency, you will be fluent in Spanish and will have mastered the cultural aspects of delivering health care in an underserved Latino community, transferable far beyond Lawrence.
We do not buy into the myth that tertiary center- based residency programs necessarily provide more “academic” training. Our national reputation as an academically powerful program is well-deserved and our residents get the “best of both worlds”. Our diverse and extremely talented faculty publishes extensively, teaches at national meetings of family medicine educators, and lead academic family medicine organizations. We have 3 fellowships (Faculty development, OB, and Holistic Integrative and Pluralistic [HIP] Medicine) which make our academics even more robust. All our residents learn full-spectrum family medicine which includes strong maternity care training and tremendous experience in family medicine inpatient and outpatient procedures. Only 30 minutes North of Boston, we are academically affiliated with both UMass and Tufts, giving our residents access to significant academic resources and teaching opportunities right here in Lawrence.
Finally, and most importantly, people are passionate here about what they do. When I ask residents, faculty, and staff what they most like about our residency program, the answer is universally- “the people here” and the sense of belonging to a learning community that “feels like a family”. We want to continue to attract people who intensely care about serving those who need it the most, now and in the future. If you are committed to caring for the underserved and seek training in an academically challenging and supportive environment, we invite you to join us!
Joe Gravel, MD
Residency Director, Lawrence Family Medicine Residency