Maine Medical Center
group photo of the family medicine residents outside by the ocean, boats are anchored behind them

Family Medicine Residency

We are an academic department of family medicine committed to improving the health of the communities we serve through direct patient care, advocacy, medical education and scholarly inquiry.

The Resident Experience at Maine Medical Center

Family Medicine Residency Program

Key Strengths of the Program

  • The people!
    • Ask anyone in the program and that will be their first reply.
    • Physician, pharmacy and behavioral health faculty with a multitude of clinical interests
    • Family Medicine is one of the oldest training programs at Maine Medical Center
    • We serve a diverse community—there are over 60 languages spoken in Portland Public Schools!
  • Quality of Life:
    • Portland, Maine is Forbes Magazine’s ‘Most Livable City’ and Bon Appetit Magazine’s ‘America’s Foodiest Small Town.’ Our beaches and mountains, amazing local food, craft beers, and arts scene are other reasons we love it here.
    • 2 week block rotations limit intensive inpatient time
    • Limited 24 hour call (1 per year as a PGY2 and PGY3)
  • Focus on education:
    • Weekly didactics: From 1-5pm on Wednesday afternoons, residents have protected teaching time to attend educational sessions on a variety of topics. This includes protected time for resident support groups, journal clubs, and weekly resident business meetings.
    • Morning Report: Most mornings on our inpatient family medicine service, a resident presents an admission to discuss evaluation, management, and clinical reasoning.
    • Afternoon Report: Daily ambulatory teaching before afternoon clinic
    • Simulation Center: Once monthly, all residents attend a 4-hour session at the Hannaford Center for Safety, Innovation, and Simulation. Sessions include simulations of various inpatient and outpatient scenarios and procedural skills training.
    • Weekly radiology rounds on inpatient service
    • High-quality postgraduate opportunities at MMC: sports medicine, integrative medicine, addiction medicine, preventative medicine, geriatrics, palliative medicine and a 4th year Chief Resident position.
    • 100% Family Medicine Board pass rate for graduates
  • Superior outpatient training:
    • Two clinics built around resident education. Both Family Medicine Centers are NCQA Level 3 Patient Centered Medical Homes.
    • Imbedded behavioral health specialists, chronic care management teams and outpatient pharmacists
    • Residents rotate through special clinics with dedicated staff for New Mainers, gender-affirming care, treatment of substance use disorders, procedures, integrative medicine, sports medicine and dermatology in addition to integration in regular clinic sessions
  • Excellent inpatient training:
    • MMC is a tertiary care center but also serves as a community hospital, making the case mix of patients ideal for resident education.
    • Family Medicine inpatient service cares for adults, newborns, children, and obstetric patients, all supervised by family physicians
    • Deliver obstetric patients under the supervision of our family medicine doctors
    • Daily interdisciplinary care rounds including physicians, nurses, pharmacists, social workers, nutritionists, physical and occupational therapist
    •  All inpatient training is at Maine Medical Center, a nationally ranked hospital and the top hospital in Maine
  • Community-based training though our Preble Street Learning Collaborative:
    • Two weeks each year at the Preble Street Learning Collaborative
    • Exposure to walk-in medical care, outreach care and case management for those experiencing homelessness

Message from the Program Director

Here at Maine Medical Center, we aim to provide you with all the tools you need to be an incredible family physician in a supportive environment. Maine Medical Center’s role as both an academic medical center and a community hospital makes us exceptionally positioned to offer the right balance of education that the future family physician needs. We also think it’s important to live in a place you enjoy and we’re lucky that Portland, Maine is hard to beat! Our program was established long ago in 1973 and has numerous graduates who have gone on to practice in a wide variety of settings – outpatient practice, academics, direct primary care, integrative medicine, sports medicine, hospitalist medicine, addiction medicine, maternal-child health, preventive medicine, family planning, and more! As the leader of this program, I continue to advocate for our residents’ education and well-being within the ever-changing landscape of medicine. Come join us to become the family physician that every patient deserves!

Carly McAteer, MD
Director, Family Medicine Residency Program

Our Commitment to Diversity

We serve a diverse community. 19% of people who live in Portland are from minority groups. Our residency is committed to increasing the diversity of our residents and faculty. We strongly encourage and welcome applicants from under-represented minority groups to apply to our program.

The MMC Family Medicine residency program values creating a diverse and inclusive work and learning environment as a means to promote excellence in patient care and education. We serve a diverse community, originating from around the world and spanning the age, gender and socioeconomic spectrum. Our residency has an open and welcoming culture and we continue to work to better represent the patients we serve. We recognize that our program and institution are in the early phases of this process and we are committed to advancing this critical work to better serve our patients and our learners.

DEI Initiatives Within Our Program

Current curricular experiences

  • Unconscious bias training
  • "How Race Affects Medical Care" didactic series
  • Exposure sessions at: Portland Public Health, Maine Muslim Community Center, Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project, Portland Needle Exchange, Language Access at Portland Public Schools, Maine Equal Justice Partners
  • Trip to Maine State Legislature for advocacy day
  • Letter to the Editor drafting session
  • Harm reduction didactic session
  • Longitudinal experiences
    • Care of obstetrical patients whose primary care providers work at an FQHC
    • Care of the patient experiencing homelessness

Elective opportunities

  • Gender clinic
  • Family planning and advocacy
  • Care of patients experiencing homelessness
  • Addiction medicine
  • Advocacy
  • Child abuse
  • Public Health
  • Indian Health Services

Experiences and curricula in progress

  • Longitudinal curriculum encompassing caring for vulnerable and under-served populations as well as diversity, equity, inclusion and advocacy.

DEI Initiatives Within the Department of Family Medicine

MMC FM DEI committee

Monthly FM Interdisciplinary Grand Rounds. Past sessions include:

  • How do YOU Identify: Identity Consciousness and Zones of Proximity
  • Microaggressions and Implicit Bias: How our Implicit and Subconscious Beliefs Drive Bias and Alienation
  • A Virtual Walk Through Your Privilege
  • Looking Inward and Behaving Outward: How do we Promote both Individual and Organizational Change?
  • Family Medicine and Leadership: How we can and should play an important role in our society
  • Care of Transgender Patients
  • Recognizing and responding to racism, bias and the current climate (in conjunction with the Department of Pediatrics)
  • Foundations of Diversity Equity and Inclusion
  • Immigrant, Refugee and Asylee video and discussion
  • MaineHealth and Maine State legislation updates
  • Primary care innovation/transformation
  • MaineHealth and Maine State Community and Public health efforts
  • Maine Access Immigrant Network Community Health Outreach Workers (CHOW)
  • Preble Street Learning Collaborative updates

Learn more about DEI initiatives within the Maine Medical Center department of graduate medical education.