Obstetric Education
Obstetric education at UPMC St. Margaret consists of longitudinal prenatal care at the family health centers throughout your 3 years of residency as well as two core rotations at UPMC Magee-Women’s hospital- one in the 1st year and one in the 2nd year. There is a lecture series that spans all 3 years of residency as well as the option to pursue additional obstetric experience through elective time or an area of concentration in women’s health, obstetrics, or gynecology. The area of concentration requires additional elective rotations along with requirements for research and a local or national presentation.
Magee is a tertiary care hospital with 22 LDRs and is one of the top ten OB programs in the country with approximately 10,000 deliveries per year. During your core rotations, you will work as a team with residents from Shadyside and McKeesport Family Medicine Residencies to take care of all the family medicine patients in triage, L&D, and postpartum from our health centers as well as patients from two outside FQHCs that we work with. You will staff the family medicine OB service but also see obstetrical patients in triage and labor and delivery under the supervision of the OB generalist group. The generalist group consists of midwives, obstetricians, and 3 fellowship-trained family physicians (all of whom happen to be St. Margaret graduates). You will also take care of all the postpartum moms and babies on the Family medicine service and complete circumcisions.
First-year residents spend one ½ day a week during their OB rotation seeing patients in our Lawrenceville office during OB clinic learning outpatient obstetric care. They also participate in OB chart review one ½ day per week. Chart review is an internal quality initiative and allows exposure to more patient care data and medical issues which offers additional learning opportunities. Once a resident has completed their first year of OB rotation, they can then see prenatal patients in their office schedule.
As a second year, you will complete a combined 8-week gyne/ OB rotation that incorporates 4 weeks of outpatient gyne procedures & visits at all 3 St. Margaret FHCs followed by 4 weeks of inpatient obstetrics. It is during this time when residents meet, care for, and deliver their continuity obstetric panel of patients from all 3 family health centers. Your continuity patients all have due dates in the middle 4 weeks of your 8-week block which allows you to deliver all your continuity patients within your 8 week rotation.
If you have an interest in pursuing prenatal or obstetric care in your practice, or an OB fellowship after residency, then we will work with you to create an OB track (to schedule your OB rotation early in the first and second years which allows for time for additional elective experiences in the 2nd and 3rd year, and time to put together fellowship applications. On average we have 1-2 residents per year that go on to OB fellowships.
Elective experience is encouraged and can be gained through local or away high-volume electives, completing an area of concentration, and completing the private practice initiative in an office that provides prenatal care. Advanced Life Support in Obstetrics (ALSO) is a requirement for all St. Margaret residents. Courses are offered locally twice a year, taught in part by our own faculty.
Gynecology and Women’s Health
As a St. Margaret resident, you will take care of women throughout your 3 years of residency and manage women’s health and gynecologic issues regularly. Our residents are all taught how to discuss pregnancy spacing, comprehensive contraceptive counseling, breast cancer and cervical cancer screening and treatment, evaluation and management of vaginal discharge, abnormal uterine bleeding, pelvic pain, menopause, and a myriad of other women’s health issues.
During your 2nd-year gynecology rotation, you will staff our gyne/ob clinics at all 3 health centers and receive training in colposcopy, IUD and Nexplanon insertion and removal, endometrial biopsies, pessary use and management of common outpatient gynecologic issues. Residents also spend time at Magee Women’s Hospital participating in their colposcopy clinic as well as several other local sites for additional experience with LARC insertion and removal, office gyne procedures as well as exposure to options counseling and procedures.
For those who wish to have extra experience over what the core rotations offer, there is elective time available as well as a Women’s Health area of concentration that we create based on the individual residents’ goals and objectives.