WSU College of Medicine to offer medical residency program in Everett

The Washington State University College of Medicine has established an internal medicine residency program in Everett, based at Providence Regional Medical Center.

The three-year program will be available to new medical school graduates to apply for this year, with the program starting in June 2021. To become practicing physicians, students in medical school must go on to complete a residency after they receive their medical degree.

With the WSU-Everett residency program opening in 2021, fourth year medical students at WSU College of Medicine could apply to the program and continue their studies in the affiliated residency, although the match process is not so simple.

The WSU Internal Medicine Residency Program will offer 16 initial spots for 2021 and add a group of students each year to the three-year program, eventually accommodating up to 40 spots.

Unlike other internal medicine residencies, the WSU program will be focused on primary care, as well as care in intensive care units, ambulatory care services, emergency rooms and long-term care settings.

“The primary goal is to create general internists to practice in the rural and under-served areas in the state, and the curriculum will be focused on those areas,” Dr. Jonathan Espenschied, associate dean of graduate medical education at WSU, said.

While students in the residency will be based in Everett, WSU has and continues to establish partnerships with local medical groups in northwest Washington state in order for students to complete rotations in rural parts of the state. Everett was a strategic choice, first for its location. It is one of the College of Medicine’s clinical campuses, which are located in Spokane, Tri-Cities, Vancouver and Everett.

Partnering with Providence Regional Medical Center also assures that students will have access to leadership support, a variety of patients to treat and care for as well as reimbursement for the program, according to WSU. The majority of the residency will be funded through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Espenschied said that this is not the only residency program WSU College of Medicine is developing, but at this point the Everett program will be the only one that is accredited and ready to accept students in 2021.

Medical residency programs are filled by soon-to-be medical school graduates. After they interview with certain programs, the candidates make prioritized lists of the programs they want to be a part of, and the program directors make prioritized lists of the candidates they want to be a part of their programs. Then, on match day, which is March 19, 2021, students are sorted into a program based on these lists and a sorting process.

This process inevitably means that not all resident slots will be filled by Washington state medical students, however, research shows that where students have residencies, they are more likely to stay and practice.

Students in the residency program will be based in Everett, but options for rural rotations are still being planned.

“It will be a requirement to branch out to rural and under-served areas,” Espenschied said. “We will have a robust continuity clinic which is not the norm for internal medicine, but this will be a cornerstone of the program.”