Doctors train before entering practice

Where do young doctors get hands on experience to complete their formal education and officially enter medical practice? At teaching hospitals where the freshest minds and most recent technology offer care that is as good if not better than any other medical facility available.

That is what the teaching staff, students and residents at Leonard J. Chabert Medical Center contend that they offer their patients and the Tri-parish region as a whole.

Chabert Medical Center opened in 1978 and is one of seven LSU hospitals managed by the health care services division. It participates in disease management with disciplines in internal medicine, cardiology, neurology, ophthalmology, gynecology, geriatrics, adolescent medicine and other specialized areas. The facility also is only the seventh intermediate program for the training of medical professionals that has been fully accredited since the year 2000.

The Chabert Medical Center internal medicine program was fully accredited by the American Council for Graduate Medical Education on July 1, 2008. “It accepts eight people per training year and there are three training years involved,” said Chabert Medical Director Dr. Michael Garcia. “So this June we will finish our first class.”

Currently, 48 residents and 70 medical students make the rounds and treat patients with staff physicians of all medical disciplines on a daily basis as part of their overall education.

Garcia said the number of graduates that have passed through Chabert programs count in the thousands. “Since it goes back to before electronic capture, i.e. computers, we don’t have a clue,” he said. “Thousands of folks have completed their residency here.”

What makes this facility unique, according to Garcia and his students, is the fact that the Bayou Region has its own academic medical center.

“Chabert has molded itself into a complete graduate medical education,” Garcia said. “[We have] research as well as medical student education. We also have other disciplines like nursing. Nicholls State [University] and Fletcher [Technical Community College] send some of their medical students here. We’re certainly not a large academic center like you’ve got at LSU New Orleans or another big city, but we do a very good job at training the folks that pass through here.”

The size and culture of Chabert are among the elements, in addition to science, that residents and students there find appealing.

“The training here at Chabert has been beneficial for several reasons,” said resident Dr. John Bell. “The residents get a lot of autonomy here. The staff is certainly around supervising, but in large part, the residents are coming up with their own decisions and putting those plans in action.”

Bell said being at a smaller hospital is nice because of the relationships that are often lost in larger environments. “They know who you are. It is much easier to work with folks that have a vested interest and all work together as opposed to working in a bigger hospital,” he said.

“Every single encounter you get is a teaching opportunity,” said medical student Lindsey Richard. “It creates a great community of care.”

Acute care nurse practitioner Fabian Whitney has been with Chabert since it opened. “The program has advanced a great deal since the time we have been here,” she said. “We have our own residents as well as residents from other facilities. We train everybody who wants knowledge.”

Garcia and Whitney confirmed that many times the experience of being part of an educational medical center is as fulfilling for the staff as it is for the students and residents at the beginning stages of their careers.

“It is very rewarding from [the time they begin] their first clinical rotation and [you get to] watch them grow, and learn and finish as a resident,” Whitney said.

For students and residents at Chabert Medical Center, the experience not only covers sterile academics, it is one that forms them into skilled professionals.

KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA