MATERNAL AND CHILD HEALTH
MCH Service
Our Department has its own Maternal and Child Health service which cares for pregnant women and their babies in a model of family centered maternity care. Family medicine faculty are the attending physicians on all births on the service, which is run by the Family Medicine resident on their MCH Chief block. We had 480 births during the fiscal year and will continue to support efforts to grow in collaboration with our community partners.
Model of Family Centered Maternity Care
Our innovative, shared care model includes care for women receiving prenatal care with affiliated family physicians in rural areas, Native American communities, First Nations Healthsource (an urban Indian clinic), and First Choice Community Healthcare (a local network of federally qualified community health centers). Several attendings in these community clinics take call with our university faculty on the MCH service. We have collaborated in the development of a community based doula model and introduced group prenatal care visits into several of our maternity care practices.
Resident and Medical Student Training
All family medicine residents graduate with sufficient training to offer the usual spectrum of Family Medicine maternity and newborn care in rural or urban practice. Interns generally spend one month on the Ob/Gyn service, two weeks on the Family Medicine MCH service, and two weeks on the nurse-midwifery service. Second year residents have a high volume maternity care away rotation that is currently based in Austin or El Paso, Texas. The fourth month of maternity care training is as Chief on the MCH service in the third year. We have an elective rotation for medical students in Maternal, Child and Reproductive Health.
MCH Fellowship
We initiated a two-year MCH fellowship in 2003 to train leaders in Family Medicine for rural or academic practice settings. The fellowship is offered in collaboration with UNM Ob/Gyn and Pediatrics Departments and includes advanced clinical training in maternity and newborn care. Fellowship graduates will be skilled in cesarean delivery, postpartum tubal ligation, newborn resuscitation and stabilization, operative vaginal delivery, abortion care (medical and surgical) if desired, first trimester obstetrical ultrasound, colposcopy and care of complicated obstetric patients. All fellows will receive a certificate in public health based on coursework and have the opportunity to complete an MPH concurrently with the MCH fellowship. In addition, we are developing a core educational series in which all fellows in our department will participate. Larry Leeman MD, MPH is the fellowship director. Dr. Leeman has competed an FP OB fellowship and trains the fellows in operative obstetrics along with UNM Ob/Gyn faculty.
Faculty
We have fifteen UNM Family Medicine faculty who include maternity care in their practices and provide role models for the incorporation of maternity care at University and community based practices. This is an energetic group of faculty committed to prenatal and delivery care; several of them have been active in maternal child healthcare for over 15 years. Family Medicine faculty are the attending physicians in the University Hospital Newborn Nursery for 50% of the year. Several of our FM MCH faculty have rural maternity care experience.
For more information
Further inquiries about the UNM Family Medicine MCH service and fellowship should be addressed to Dr. Larry Leeman at lleeman@salud.unm.edu |
