Providing high quality care to the Grays Harbor community and surrounding areas is always at the forefront of Summit Pacific Medical Center’s goals, and to continue doing just that well into the future, the Hospital District implemented the Providence St. Peter-Summit Pacific Rural Family Medicine Program.
The coming year will be a monumental one as the third full class of residents has officially arrived to begin providing care at Summit Pacific, creating a full complement of six residents in the program. “Rural training programs like this exist to improve access to quality healthcare in rural and underserved areas,” expresses Dr. Shawn Andrews, primary care provider and Summit Pacific’s residency program director. “This is truly an awesome program and we’re all very fortunate to have the residents that we do.”
This year’s new residents are Dr. Mackie Chan and Dr. Bethany Healey. Both providers will spend three years caring for primary care patients at Summit Pacific Wellness Center.
About Mackie Chan, MD
Dr. Chan was born in Hong Kong and has spent the last decade in Western Washington. She believes in whole-person health and enjoys working with her patients in holistic approach. She is excited to bring her passion for rural medicine to Grays Harbor County.
About Bethany Healey, MD
Dr. Healey was born and raised in Lake Country, British Columbia. While in medical school, she served as a senior member of the doctoral program teaching hematology to second and third-year medical students. She is passionate about community service and providing quality care to underserved populations.
The residency program first launched at the end of June 2020, bringing in the first round of residents. Affiliated with an established core program at Providence St. Peter Family Medicine in Olympia, the program at Summit Pacific provides residents with hands-on, full scope family medicine training. Not only is the state-of-the-art Wellness Center at Summit Pacific their home base, but it’s also where the residents participate in all three years of their continuity clinics.
While at Summit Pacific, residents work alongside the numerous faculty members creating a well-balanced interprofessional healthcare team that allows residents to learn while also passing along their newfound knowledge. With a wide range of residents donning unique skillsets and talents, an environment has been created that allows for all patients who walk through the doors to be treated with the best quality of care.
For those in the program, beginning their residency is a huge step in both their professional and personal lives. The program kicks off year one at Providence St. Peter Family Medicine each June. After a few weeks of orientation, residents have begun rotations at Providence while also spending one day each week in clinic at Summit Pacific.
Once the residents conclude their first year of residency, they move onto year two and three at Summit Pacific where they complete their rotations. While at Summit Pacific, resident rotations include more than 20 curriculum topics led by faculty including, Jordan Snell, DO, Janelle Wortman, PharmD, Marcus Heisler, MD, MPH, associate program director, Mandy Achterman, DO, MPH and program director, Shawn Andrews, MD, FAAFP.
“Core faculty and provider leaders have done an amazing job of taking on teaching responsibilities and welcoming residents,” says Senior Medical Director of Ambulatory Care Services and Family Medicine Residency Program Director, Dr. Shawn Andrews.
During these intense three years of residency, there is also the all-important annual training exams as well as the second-year step three exam which is a requirement to become board certified in family medicine. Ultimately, the dedication and hard work will culminate with their family medicine board exams followed by a well-earned graduation at the end of year three.
Accreditation
The Providence St. Peter-Summit Pacific Rural Family Medicine Program was officially awarded with a full ten-year accreditation by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), solidifying its future in Grays Harbor.
The obtainment of ACGME accreditation provides the assurance that a U.S. graduate medical education program meets the quality standards, both institutional and program requirements, of the practice for which it prepares its graduates.
“In order to obtain the accreditation,” states Andrews, “there was first a provisional visit, followed by another visit once our residents were in-house. There was also an initial 200-page application, a lot of paperwork including copies of our building blueprints tagged with special markers for residency program areas, interviews with all faculty, curriculum schedules and much more.”
“Receiving this accreditation is a huge deal for all of us,” exclaims Andrews. “We now have this official stamp of approval for 10 years.” The goal moving forward as more graduates continue to emerge from the program is for some, if not all, to stay local in the Grays Harbor area. Andrews also explains how welcoming and supportive the local community has been for the 25+ years that medical students and residents have been doing local rotations.
For more information on the program and facility as a whole, visit the Summit Pacific Medical Center website. To schedule an appointment with any provider, please call 360-346-2222.
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