Spokane Teaching Health Center Program

Program Identity & Fit

Spokane Teaching Health Center's Internal Medicine Residency is a community-based, mission-driven categorical program of 10 residents/year, anchored at Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center (the largest tertiary referral center between Seattle and Minneapolis) and rotating through Deaconess, the Mann-Grandstaff VA, and a rural critical-access site, giving trainees breadth across underserved, veteran, and rural populations alongside high-acuity tertiary referrals. The program is structured around dual pathways rather than a single identity: a Primary Care Track building longitudinal ambulatory and HIV-focused continuity care for outpatient/general internal medicine careers, and a post-residency Clinician Teacher Fellowship explicitly designed to funnel graduates into academic faculty roles or subspecialty fellowships. Procedural autonomy is emphasized (residents obtain their own central lines, thoracenteses, and paracenteses without competing against fellows), and scholarly activity is broad but not central to identity—QI projects, case reports, and ACP/SGIM presentations are expected and supported, but the program does not present itself as research-intensive. Its interprofessional STHC clinic (shared with family medicine and psychiatry) and integrated HIV primary-care curriculum, alongside stated recruitment of a diverse resident/faculty workforce, signal a program valuing collaborative, community-oriented, longitudinal patient relationships over subspecialty prestige.