Emergency Medicine Residency Program

Our program is fully accredited and affiliated with UCLA and provides its 28 emergency medicine residents a unique balance of direct supervision, didactics, and extensive hands-on training.

We train emergency physicians with the skills, medical judgment, clinical maturity, and personal confidence to function effectively as practitioners, teachers, and community leaders. The curriculum is designed to foster an interest in the continued study of medicine, and to prepare physicians to make significant and ongoing contributions to the specialty.

Our graduates can provide highly skilled care in any emergency department, rural or urban, utilizing the best clinical skills and academic knowledge that the specialty has to offer.

Accreditation

The Kern Medical Emergency Medicine Residency Program was awarded full accreditation by the Residency Review Commission for Emergency Medicine (RRC-EM), with renewal in 2015. Our program is fully compliant with Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) recommendations regarding resident on-call duty hours.

About the Emergency Department

We treat approximately 50,000 patients each year. While officially a trauma 2 center we function at a level one status. Our ER has the 2nd most number of trauma activations in the state of California. We are the only trauma center between Los Angeles and Visalia/Fresno. All adult and pediatric traumas occurring in our catchment area come to our hospital where they are managed by our ER residents.

Residents become very comfortable managing high-acuity patients with challenging and diverse disease processes including farming and oil industry accidents, toxicology/chemical exposures, animal bites, wilderness medicine related injuries, and plenty of penetrating and blunt trauma.

The patient population is primarily indigent, but the ED also receives referrals from facilities all over the county and serves unofficially as the local referral center.

The ED contains 32 beds consisting of 6 trauma and medical resuscitation bays, 9 monitored beds, 4 respiratory isolation and gynecologic rooms, 1 padded psychiatric observation room, 1 eye room, and an adjacent 6 bed urgent care center with 3 treatment rooms.

Two spiral CT scanners and a dedicated X-ray suite are all physically located within the department. CT scan, X-ray, and ultrasound services are available 24 hours a day.