Chief Resident Statement

Congratulations on your decision to pursue Family Medicine as a career! Thank you for considering our Family Medicine Program at MercyOne Des Moines Medical Center. We are pleased you are interested in our program, and we aim to give you an inside look at what makes our program distinctive. Deciding where to apply for residency is a challenging yet exciting process.

We'd like to make mention a few of the highlights that make our program a top choice for your training:

• Our Hospital: We are a tertiary care center and Level II Trauma Center in Des Moines, Iowa. While MercyOne Des Moines has all of the amenities you might find at a large academic center, it is small enough to develop relationships with the specialists and really learn from them.  We also have a pediatric floor that our residency program manages alongside the pediatric hospitalists. Our Labor and Delivery and Mother/Baby units are absolutely beautiful and deliver and care for nearly 4,500 babies every year. Family Medicine residents are on service for pediatric inpatient and medical floors at all times.

• Curriculum: Our didactics are faculty and resident driven, consisting of a high yield, board review style format combined with formal topic review by subspecialties. The curriculum is further enhanced with journal clubs, radiology rounds, and a variety of interactive clinical cases. Ideas for lectures have been purposefully shaped from what residents found most useful.

• Despite having three other residencies in house (internal medicine, surgery, and psychiatry) and fellows, there is a collegial atmosphere.  There is no competition between programs (well maybe a little but it’s all in good fun).  There is no shortage of patients or procedures for your educational experience. Our resident lounge set-up fosters interactions between residents and allows the residents from all of the programs to lean on each other and curbside one another on difficult cases. 

• Our Clinic: Our clinic is conveniently located just across the street from the hospital. There we care for a very diverse population of patients as our clinic is a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC).  This provides us with a robust outpatient experience and additional resources for our patients.

• Our Faculty: Our attending physicians are national and international experts in their fields, yet they also have a deep-rooted commitment to resident teaching.  They prize fostering relationships with the residents and they make themselves readily available to the residents. We are also lucky to have an OBGYN on faculty to assist with obstetrics and gynecologic care of complex patients. 

Additional track opportunities:

• We are very proud of our Integrative Medicine track in collaboration with the University of Arizona. The curriculum is offered to second year residents as part of a longitudinal training and they have two years to complete the requirements for the IM certificate. Many of our residents successfully complete this additional training.

• RURAL RESIDENCY- In 2021, we were excited to add 2 additional residents as part of our Rural Training Residency. These residents are selected for their specific interest to pursue careers in rural medicine in Iowa. These residents receive a combination of training at our tertiary care hospital as well as various critical access hospitals across Iowa. They also maintain a rural continuity clinic. 

• RURAL EXPERIENCE - Most of our residents are interested in being well-rounded FM doctors. Starting PGY-2 year, residents are given the opportunity to take part in the Rural track where they travel to a rural town and train in a 25-bed critical access hospital and small town Family Medicine clinic. 

• OSTEOPATHIC RECOGNITION -  We are the only family medicine residency in Iowa to receive Osteopathic recognition. Osteopathic residents have the opportunity to apply their skills in our OMT clinic, complete Osteopathically focused research topics and attend Osteopathic lectures with the assistance of our Osteopathic faculty and faculty at Des Moines University, our local Osteopathic medical school. 

Additional learning opportunities:

• ULTRASOUND: Our residency offers additional training in point of care ultrasound. We have 10 Butterfly IQ ultrasounds split between the hospital and clinic that our residents utilize for various patient care and learning scenarios. Residents have access to online learning modules for ultrasound and can complete an ultrasound elective. 

• OBSTETRICS: Interested residents can pursue additional training in obstetrics with electives and additional OB continuity patients. With roughly 4,500 deliveries per year at Mercy One, and no OB/GYN residency, there are opportunities abound for FM residents to get involved in OB care. 

• TEACHING: Our residents get experience teaching medical students during residency. We welcome fourth year students for sub-internships as well as third year medical students from our local osteopathic medical school year round. These students rotate with us on our in-patient family medicine service as well as in our clinic. We also work closely with medical students and PA students on our in-patient pediatrics rotations. 

Life often changes in residency, and we know that. Personal life can't stop for three years, and the program has an excellent record of accommodating residents during major life events. We would love to tell you more about why we chose to come here and what our program has to offer. We strongly encourage you to apply for residency training here in Des Moines, and if you have any questions, please contact us personally.

Regards,

Alexander Schmidt, DO

Dayna King, DO

Chief Residents