Program Director's Overview

Welcome to Smiley's! Our mission is to provide outstanding care that improves the health of our diverse patients and urban community, while educating experts in family medicine for today and tomorrow. We have a global focus—our patient population hails from all over the world. Our clinic staff is remarkably diverse, and we strive to prepare our residents to practice on a global stage. Our goal is that each resident has the opportunity to grow and develop professionally into an outstanding family physician. Here are some of the Smiley's program highlights:

• Our graduates are well trained for the practice of their choice. Twenty percent of our graduates go on to do fellowship training, 10% do international work, 10% work in rural practice and 10% work in urban, underserved areas following graduation.
  

• Our faculty are outstanding physicians, teachers, and researchers, with interests in a wide range of topics. Our faculty have received a total of 21 honors and awards for teaching and scholarly work in the past decade. In the past five years, our faculty have produced a total of 49 publications and received 27 grants.
  

• Our curriculum has an emphasis on chronic care, ambulatory family medicine, women's health, and sports medicine, while providing excellent training in family medicine fundamentals. Resident education incorporates humanities, cross cultural care, and bioethics. Our residents have five months of elective time, part of which can be spent abroad on rotations in countries such as India, Argentina, Costa Rica, Pakistan, Panama, Korea, and Thailand.
  

• Our clinic is continuously improving to better meet the needs of patients and learners. We have a fully-implemented electronic medical record that supports the practice of evidence-based medicine. We place an emphasis on physician continuity of care and have integrated care teams that include a pharmacist, care managers, and counselors. Our team approach is aimed at improving the care and health of our patients with chronic illnesses, such as diabetes and depression, and ensuring residents have expert resources available to them.
  

• Our clinic is a new, state-of-the-art facility designed with the future in mind. The clinic has an on-site pharmacy, large exam rooms with more privacy for patients requiring an interpreter, a wellness room for residents, a lactation room for clinic staff, and a superior design of patient care and teaching areas.
  

• Our program serves the wide range of people actually living or working in our local community—an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse group of patients—from new African immigrants to Augsburg College students to established professionals—along with many others. We strive to maintain an atmosphere that is welcoming and tailored to the needs of all who enter.

I invite you to take a closer look at Smiley’s.

Patricia Adam, MD, MSPH