Spokane Teaching Health Center-Sacred Heart Medical Center Program

Program Identity & Fit

This is a community-based, mission-driven Family Medicine program anchored at the Spokane Teaching Health Clinic and Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center, a 600+ bed tertiary referral hospital for a tri-state region, giving residents unusually broad inpatient and procedural exposure (including high-volume obstetrics) within a full-scope training model. The program offers two distinct tracks—an urban Spokane Training Track serving underserved city populations and a Rural Training Track (the nation's longest-running, established 1986) placing residents in Colville/Chewelah for two years of immersive rural, independent-practice training—plus a dedicated Obstetrics Fellowship for those pursuing surgical OB or rural teaching roles. Research is not a structural priority; instead, the program emphasizes clinical breadth, behavioral health integration, interprofessional collaboration with co-located Internal Medicine and Psychiatry residencies, and readiness for independent, broad-scope practice in underserved settings. Graduate outcomes skew heavily toward rural and community full-spectrum practice, including continued operative obstetrics, rural ER/hospitalist work, and FQHC careers, reflecting a program that values resourcefulness, community commitment, and comfort with procedural autonomy over research or subspecialty ambition.