University of Virginia Health System

Behavioral Science training will be a very important part of your education, wherever you train. A sound footing in handling the many interesting, challenging and sometimes frustrating interactions you will have over your professional lifetime will go a long way toward enhancing your enjoyment of practicing Family Medicine.At the University of Virginia, we take very seriously the importance of providing a solid and sophisticated education in the art of medicine to go along with first class biomedical training.

Behavioral Science training has been a key part of U.Va.'s Residency program since its earliest days. Dr. David Waters, Ph.D., a child psychologist with special training as a family therapist, joined the Dept. full-time in 1975. In 1978 he began the Family Stress Clinic, a clinic within the Department that provides mental health counseling to patients from our practice as well as those referred from outside whose problems fall within the purview of family doctors. The Family Stress Clinic is still going strong, and has been copied by a number of other residency programs across the nation. Its unique contribution is the opportunity for family doctors to provide treatment for a variety of normal problems with direct supervision through a one-way mirror.

Our philosophy has always been that psychosocial issues make up a very large and very interesting part of Family Medicine, and that failure to teach residents some useful skills for dealing with those is irresponsible. We do not expect family doctors to become therapists, but we want them to have a great deal of comfort identifying, dealing with and helping patients resolve those issues, either by brief treatment or referral.If you are not prepared to deal comfortably with psychosocial challenges, Family Medicine will be a more difficult undertaking.

As you will see, our rotation is a 4-week full time block in the second year, with a variety of learning opportunities. The most recent addition to those opportunities is our new program in Collaborative Care. In the Collaborative Care program, we combine medical and psychosocial care in a single visit that enhances both our learning and patient outcomes. Residents see patients from time to time in the company of a psychologist, in order to provide optimal attention to the psychological and spiritual aspects of care. It is also possible for residents to get psychosocial consultation immediately when it is needed. This allows them to delve into psychosocial issues with the same kind of solid support they get in the medical arena. It is working extremely well, and will continue to be a fixture of training here.

Ours is a program that takes training in behavioral science seriously as a vital part of your education. At the same time, we do it in ways that are fun, interesting, challenging and directly applicable to your future practice. We hope you will look further into the unusual and exciting opportunities you will have here to learn and grow in this important area.