St. John's Hospital Family Medicine Residency
Our Phalen residency clinic has served this community for 50+ years. It’s a vibrant urban neighborhood in St. Paul, rich with a family-centered, multicultural population. We care for multi-generational families, and are busy with well and ill pediatric visits, adults needing preventive and disease management, parents eager to welcome babies, and grandparents with geriatric concerns.
M Health Fairview St. John’s Hospital is a community-based, award-winning hospital, part of the inner St. Paul suburbs, serving a broad sector of urban to rural by virtue of its location and its staffing for complex care referrals. Family medicine is embedded in its history with family medicine doctors as leaders, as rounding hospitalists, and as delivering providers caring for moms and babies. As a resident in all areas of the hospital, you’ll be active in the busy emergency room, ICU, and labor and delivery, which provides in-depth opportunities for learning hospital medicine, newborn pediatric care, and labor and delivery management.
St John’s residency program equips all residents with the experience and training to care for families and the needs in the life of a family-- family members maintaining their health at all ages, families starting pregnancy and parenting concerns, families dealing with acute illness and end-of-life concerns. Our program highlights how family medicine partners with specialists, with the community, and the neighborhood to promote better health.
Uniquely, our program also provides colonoscopy training, colposcopy training, and has opportunities in the important musculoskeletal and sports medicine training that is important for all ages. This is the foundation of family medicine that serves residents in their future goals, whether in full-spectrum rural care, as hospitalists, or in fellowships such as sports medicine, geriatrics, palliative care, or occupational medicine. Graduates of our program are fully equipped to take care of every family member, regardless of practice setting: the clinic, the hospital, the home, the care facility, wherever care is needed.
Curriculum highlights
Our training centers around the entire care needs of a family–preventive health, disease management, musculoskeletal issues including injury prevention, acute care, and aging mobility concerns, prenatal care, delivery and newborn care, parenting and well child visits, serious illness and hospitalization care, plus nursing home rounding and home visits.
- Rotations are all one-on-one with attendings
- Didactic three-year curriculum every other Tuesday afternoon, interactive education methods
- Resident choice in longitudinal activities- intentional design to thread specific experiences important to career goals in a linear fashion, not in rotation blocks: examples include fellowship-specific skills, urban or rural care, women’s health
- Electives in many areas, including obstetrics and gynecology, rural sites, sports medicine, colonoscopy training, and more
- Physician life skills curriculum: resident-driven with a wellness resident champion, focused on lifelong career habits and attitudes, intentionally acknowledging and understanding factors influencing current and future professional fulfillment with the goal of reducing professional burnout
Our community
Apply, benefits, and residency resources
- How to apply
- Resident stipends and benefits
- St. John's Hospital Family Medicine Residency Program Fact Sheet
- St. John’s Residency Program Policy and Procedure Manual
- University of Minnesota Graduate Medical Education Institutional Policies
- Support resources for residents (including mental health resources, well-being tools, work/life balance, and more)
St. John's Medical Student Opportunities
Rotations
We host a number of medical student rotations at Phalen Village Family Medicine Clinic and M Health Fairview St. John's Hospital.
Many applicants have found rotations helpful in determining whether the program is a good fit for them because rotations provide a more substantial experience than an interview allows for.
Clinic-based rotations
Medical students spend half of the rotation paired with faculty physicians providing care to their regular panel of patients. The rest of the time, students are matched with residents providing care to same-day or open access patients. Other residents in clinic may also share interesting cases as time allows.
Hospital-based rotations
While scheduling preference is shown to University of Minnesota medical students, students from other medical schools are welcome to rotate through our program.
Where We Practice
Learn more about where we practice and our community.
M Health Fairview Clinic - Phalen Village
A certified health care home located in a diverse urban neighborhood and a 20-minute drive from M Health Fairview St. John's Hospital.
M Health Fairview St. John's Hospital
Smaller suburban community-based primary care hospital with up-to-date technology.
Our community
We serve a well-established, ethnically diverse population, ranging from newborn to geriatric age.
St. John's M Health Fairview Clinic - Phalen Village
The M Health Fairview Clinic - Phalen Village is a certified health care home located in St. Paul, four miles from the residency's suburban M Health Fairview St. John's Hospital, in a diverse, urban neighborhood.
Patients include newborns, adolescents, adults, geriatrics, and those residing in nursing homes/assisted living facilities.
Amenities
- Integrated care team with onsite behavioral health and social work, psychiatry, and on-site legal aid office hours
- Hmong, Spanish, and Korean-speaking staff on-site; outside interpreter services contracted for in-person interpreters for the majority of visits
- EpicCare (electronic medical record)
- Conference room
- 20 exam rooms, one procedure room
- In clinic digital x-ray, mobile mammography, ultrasound, and lab
- Large precepting room with individual resident desk space
- Lactation room
Services
- Hmong- and Spanish-speaking staff on-site; outside interpreter services contracted as needed
- Procedures include colposcopy, ultrasound, nasal pharyngoscopy, vasectomy, colonoscopy, skin biopsy and other excision techniques
- Lean Systems efficiencies and process improvement opportunities
- Practice-based research on-site
In-house lab tests
The clinic performs a number of laboratory tests in-house.
- CBC with three part differential
- ESR (Sed Rate)
- Glucose meter
- Glycosylated hemoglobin A1c
- Helicobacter Pylori
- HCG qualitative (serum and urine)
- INR
- KOH scraping
- Mono testing
- Occult blood (stool)
- Potassium
- Sodium
- Rapid strep (group A)
- Urinalysis
- Urinalysis with micro
- Wet prep (KOH included)
Other tests are sent to our reference laboratory twice daily.
The clinic is connected to the reference laboratory's computer system, so results can be accessed at the clinic and in the electronic medical record as soon as they are available.
In-house procedures
The clinic performs a number of procedures in-house.
MSK
- Joint injections and aspirations
- Lacerations-Suture placement/removal
- Casting and splinting
GU/Colorectal
- Colonoscopy in an outpatient surgery site
- Hemorrhoid banding
- Vasectomy
GYN-Women’s Health
- Colposcopy
- Endometrial biopsy
- IUD placement and removal
- Nexplanon insertion and removal
POCUS
- Obstetric ultrasound - quick look
- MSK and soft tissue, inpatient cardiopulmonary quick look
- Bladder scan post-void residual
- Osteopathic manual treatment (OMT)
DERM
- dermoscopy
- Excision of skin lesions
- Skin biopsy: rashes, moles
- Cryotherapy of lesions
- Toenail removal and nail trimming
M Health Fairview St. John's Hospital
M Health Fairview St. John's Hospital is a 184-bed acute care community hospital with a strong emphasis on family medicine.
- Family physicians comprise more than 50 percent of the medical staff and account for 75 percent of all hospital admissions
- M Health Fairview St. John's Hospital has been around for more than 100 years, but has been in its current location since 1985
- Honored as one of U.S. News and World Report's 2021 "Best Hospitals for Maternity"
About M Health Fairview
M Health Fairview is one of two health care organizations in the Twin Cities named by Modern Heathcare as 1 of the Top 100 "Best Places to Work in Healthcare" in the nation. It has also been named one of the "Best Places to Work" by the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal.
Facility highlights
- Birthing center with 28 new labor, delivery, recovery, and postpartum rooms and two C-section suites
- Diagnostic imaging, X-ray, CT, MRI, ultrasound, and interventional radiology
- Complete laboratory and pathology service
- Sports medicine health and fitness center
- Outpatient cancer and surgical centers
- Education center
- Hospice and home care
- NICU, ICU/CCU
We serve a well-established, ethnically diverse population that includes first- and second-generation immigrants from Laos, Burma/Myanmar, and Mexico, ranging from newborn to geriatric age.
St. Paul, recognized as one of the safest cities in the nation by WalletHub, is home to the clinic located in the city's vibrant Greater East Side. Additionally, M Health Fairview St. John's Hospital serves the community from its location in Maplewood, a northern suburb of St. Paul.
Faculty, residents, and medical students are involved in a variety of outreach activities locally and abroad. Examples include:
- Care for young people experiencing homelessness through the Face to Face organization.
- Community education
- Sports medicine outreach
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Is the program accredited?
Yes, the program is accredited through ACGME.
What is included in the resident benefits package?
What is the call schedule?
Where do graduates practice?
- Most graduates practice family medicine in metropolitan or rural areas
- About one-third have gone to small practices
- Others work as residency faculty, emergency medicine physicians, and hospitalists
How much OB experience can I expect to get at St. John's
- Up to 50 births in the first year and then provide continued obstetrics care while on call throughout residency
- Residents follow their own OB patients in clinic, providing continuity of care before, during, and after pregnancy; up to 30 percent of patients are considered high-risk
Learn about the St. John's Resident Experience
Angela Smithson, MD, MPH
Program Director
Debra Canfield
Program Administrator
651-793-5613
E-mail: [email protected]
Get to know our Program Director and faculty
University of Minnesota St. John's Hospital Family Medicine Residency
M Health Fairview Clinic - Phalen Village
1414 Maryland Ave. E.
St. Paul, MN 55106
Bias Reporting at the University
Submit anonymous incident reports online at BRRN UReport or incident reports can also be sent to [email protected].