A New Class of Medical Residents and Fellows Start Training at Kern Medical Center

Kern Medical Center (KMC) plays a vital role in providing health care services to our community and training medical professionals as the only academic medical center in the region. As part of this responsibility, KMC serves a critical function as a safety net provider with its faculty and medical resident physicians caring for a significant number of the County’s underserved population. As an academic medical center, these same faculty and residents also engage in a broad spectrum of research addressing health issues pertinent to our community.

“Academic medicine stands as a key foundation and resource to our community and enables us to recruit not just physicians in training, but incredibly skilled faculty,” says Marina Avalos-Kegley, KMC’s Associate Director of Medical Education. “We are pleased to welcome all the new medical residents, fellows, and medical students to Bakersfield and that they have chosen KMC as their academic training site. You will see that all of our program chairs, program directors, faculty, and staff have a vested interest in serving our community and training the next generation of physicians.”

Each year, KMC trains over 100 resident physicians and fellows in eight specialties and nearly 200 medical students undergo their third and fourth year medical school rotations at the hospital and its clinics. This year’s new class has 36 residents and fellows:

Residencies:

• 5 in Emergency Medicine
• 4 in General Surgery
• 8 in Internal Medicine
• 3 in Obstetrics and Gynecology
• 6 in Psychiatry
• 6 in Rio Bravo Family Medicine

Fellowships:

• 3 in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
• 1 in Addiction Psychiatry Fellowship

Orientation for new residents, fellows, and medical students runs from Tuesday, June 24 through Thursday, June 26 with training commencing July 1, 2014.