Program Description
Mission
Our mission is to train physicians with various experiences and talents to become agents of change, enabling our graduates to transform their communities by providing compassionate, comprehensive, evidence-based care for patients of all needs and backgrounds in the Rio Grande Valley and beyond.
Our goals
- Individualized teaching that focuses on a balance of clinical knowledge and anatomical localization.
- Promote the development of academic medicine within the community.
- Support, guide, and educate residents to provide ethical and patient-centered care and fulfill professional obligations.
- Nurture residents to become lifelong learners.
- Become actively engaged with the community that we serve.
- Develop cultural awareness of the population we serve.
Our Objectives
- Competence in the comprehensive diagnosis and management of all forms of neurologic disease
- Ability to correlate medical knowledge with the physical diagnosis of neurological disorders and articulate a thoughtful differential diagnosis and therapeutic plan
- Acquisition of a rich knowledge base in clinical and basic neuroscience that:
- satisfies the requirements of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology (ABPN) and ensures successful board certification
- provides a strong foundation in the basic neurosciences
- allows for continuation of sub-specialization within neurology in the form of fellowships, if so desired.
- Certification of clinical competence by the residency training director. The clinical skills evaluation is done during residency by completing regularly scheduled neurology evaluations with satisfactory performance, to be declared competent.
- To prepare the physician for the independent practice of clinical neurology by providing training based on supervised clinical work with increasing responsibility for outpatients and inpatients.
- Experience in the teaching of neurology to colleagues and students through informal discussion and by means of formal presentation and publication.
- To provide an opportunity to develop and maintain an investigative career in the basic neurosciences and in clinical neurology.
- To demonstrate, throughout the four years of residency, the highest ethical standards and integrity in patient care, neurological learning, and interaction with faculty, peers, students and ancillary staff.
- To develop the personal attributes necessary for becoming an effective physician, including honesty, compassion, reliability, and effective communication skills.
- To use information technology and other computerized means as learning tools.
- To develop awareness of, and learn to incorporate, considerations of cost and risk-benefit analysis in patient management as appropriate, and to advocate for quality patient care.
- Commitment to learning cultural interpretation and value as they relate to health care.