The College of Community Health Sciences’ three-year family medicine residency program has selected three 2014-15 chief residents.

Leslie Zganjar, director of communications for CCHS, said the program is unique because it has no competing residencies and utilizes a single community hospital for most rotations, increasing convenience and quality.

“[The residency gives] residents ample opportunity to directly care for patients and develop procedural skills,” Zganjar said. “It has a highly skilled, committed, diverse program of 50 faculty in the core medical disciplines who teach only family medicine residents along with medical students on their clerkships.”

The residents will work at the University Medical Center’s Family Medicine Center and DCH Regional Medical Center.

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“It is a program structure that emphasizes individualized instruction,” Zganjar said.

JD Engelbrecht, an outgoing 2013-14 resident, will work as an outpatient family medicine physician with the Tanner Medical Group in Carrolton, Ga.

“I loved becoming part of the community of residents and faculty at this program. We are a close-knit group of professionals who work and learn together, and have fun while doing it,” Engelbrecht said.

Engelbrecht said some of his favorite memories with the program came from making the residents’ annual lampoon videos.

“We had some great laughs and enjoyed the camaraderie while we recorded these short films and skits about our lives as doctors/residents,” Engelbrecht said.

Sarah Mauthe, an incoming resident, completed her undergraduate work in Canada and earned a medical degree at the Saba University School of Medicine. After her residency, she hopes to work as a hospitalist in Alabama.

“I chose Tuscaloosa Family Medicine Residency Program after I met the wonderful residents who were already here,” Mauthe said. “The education and curriculum was exactly what I was looking for, and the people were warm and welcoming.”

Mauthe will be joined by Hunter Russell, who received his medical degree at the University of Alabama School of Medicine and graduated from the CCHS Rural Medical Scholars program, and Kelly Shoemake, who received her medical degree from the University of Mississippi in Jackson.

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Zganjar said graduates of the program have gone on to rural, urban and academic settings.

“Since the residency’s founding in 1974, more than 400 physicians have completed the program and the majority are practicing in Alabama and the Southeast,” Zganjar said. “In addition to the residency, the College of Community Health Sciences also offers fellowships to family medicine physicians in sports medicine, obstetrics, hospital medicine, behavioral health and rural public psychiatry.”

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