Family Medicine Residency

• Provide high quality of healthcare for our patients and their families, with personal attention to their physical and emotional needs.
• Create a center of academic excellence that promotes patient care and physician learning in a supportive, collaborative environment.
• Train a diverse physician workforce to serve our community 

1. We train physicians to become personal physicians for their patients.  All patients deserve a primary care physician who helps them receive the highest quality medical care available to them.   We define quality in terms of the quadruple aim of 1) improving the health of populations, 2) improving patient experience, 3) reducing cost, and 4) maintaining work-life balance for caregivers.   We do this by focusing on continuity of care, engaging our interprofessional team and using data to evaluate and improve our performance.
2. We support a culture of academic excellence.  We help residents reach their potential as clinicians and as scholars, and prepare them for a career of lifelong learning.  We measure their academic growth in terms of medical knowledge, scholarly activity, clinical competence and their personal goals. 
3. We value diversity in our residency and our community.  We seek to recruit and train a diverse group of residents and faculty who can provide care for all patients in our community, with special emphasis on caring for underserved populations.  We treat each patient and team member with dignity and respect and we look for opportunities to strengthen our community through service and excellent patient care.
4. We prepare residents to be good partners and leaders in their practices, health systems, and communities.  Leadership and professional integrity are core values of our program.  We value working as part of interdisciplinary care teams and train residents to be team leaders through mentorship and by providing opportunities to lead.  We measure resident progress in professional and leadership development through milestone assessments, direct observation, and feedback from patients, faculty, and team members.

Our program began in 1973 as St. Joseph’s Family Medicine Residency. Since 1895, St. Joseph’s has had a mission to care for the underserved in our area, and throughout our history the program has shared that mission. In 2017, Creighton University, Dignity Health St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center, Valleywise Health, and District Medical Group, Inc., formed the Creighton University Arizona Health Education Alliance to support graduate medical education, and the program officially became part of the Creighton family. 

As part of the Alliance, we use both St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center and Valleywise Health Medical Center for resident education.  In the fall of 2020, our program embarked on an exciting move from our previous clinic on the campus of St. Joseph’s to a new location at the Valleywise South Central Health Center in south central Phoenix, where we became part of the Valleywise Health system of Federally Qualified Health Centers.  In June of 2021 the clinic move was successfully completed.  Our inpatient service is based through Valleywise Health Medical Center. We still continue to use St. Joseph’s for some core rotations and enjoy the benefit of being able to work with two outstanding hospitals who share a common goal of excellence in graduate medical education and caring for the needs of our community.