Program Highlights

Swedish Family Medicine Residency is dedicated to creating an environment where residents can reach their full potential as family practice physicians. Our core values are outstanding resident education, quality patient care, teamwork, and intellectual and professional growth.

From its origins as a pioneer program in 1970, the residency has remained dedicated to the objectives of its training mission. The goal is to provide the best educational environment to maximize the residents' opportunity to achieve their full potential as family physicians.

Family medicine is constantly evolving. The need to incorporate new knowledge, techniques and practice into the professional performance of its graduates is addressed through curricular modifications. Residents and faculty together participate in the identification of learning needs and the implementation of strategies to accomplish the program objectives. This joint responsibility reaffirms the principle that post-graduate education is a fluid process where the educator and the learner establish the priorities and set the course. The more than 198 graduates of the residency are the products of this joint effort and are evidence that the residency has been true to its mission. Swedish is proud of the on-going personal and professional achievements of its graduates.

Graduate Dr. Clara Chan with patient

Goal, Mission, and Vision

From its origins as a pioneer program in 1970, Swedish Family Medicine Residency has remained dedicated to the objectives of its training mission.

The goal is to provide the best educational environment to maximize the residents' opportunity to achieve their full potential as family physicians.

Our mission is to prepare physicians to be leaders in the practice of comprehensive, compassionate family medicine of the highest quality.

Our vision is to be recognized nationally as a program noted for its leadership training, its innovative and humane approaches to resident education and patient care, and its commitment to patient-centered, evidence-based, community-oriented family medicine.

Program Objectives

·        Develop the concept of Family Medicine as a unique specialty providing broad primary care skills focusing on the family as a social unit.

·        Prepare physicians for practice in urban, rural or suburban communities.

·        Offer experience in obstetrics and emergency care to meet the special needs of practice in isolated communities. 

·        Provide training tracks in community family medicine for residents interested in serving the medically indigent through affiliations with the Seattle-King County Department of Public Health and the 45th St. Community Clinic.

·        Train physicians to work in group practice.

·        Train physicians to work in the context of a collaborative team of consultants and allied health workers.

·        Provide a system of practice evaluation and continuing education which will serve the changing requirements of family medicine.

·        Train physicians to be adept in utilizing medical applications of computer technology.

·        Demonstrate a model of practice providing optimal care to the patients of the Family Medicine clinics.