Residency Life

 

 

Resident Committees

Joining a committee as a resident at UT Southwestern provides a valuable opportunity to contribute to institutional initiatives, enhance the residency experience, and advocate for peers. It fosters leadership development, strengthens professional networks, and allows residents to influence policies and programs that shape their training environment. Committee involvement also promotes personal growth, improves communication and collaboration skills, and supports wellness efforts—making it a meaningful complement to clinical education.

• Recruitment Committee

  Elevates our program's recruitment initiative with a strategic focus on optimizing our social media presence, improving our pre-interview socials/dinners and any second-look experiences, recruitment fairs. The committee will be responsible for recruiting resident participation in creating an inviting virtual environment that showcases our program's strengths and values. Additionally, this committee would help the chiefs and leadership in identifying residents to serve as hosts and interviewers for interview days.

• Wellness Committee

  Nurtures the well-being of our residents, faculty, and staff members. Committee members will work with chiefs to organize monthly social gatherings, holiday events, and thoughtful projects aimed at expressing appreciation for our residents/faculty. For example, resident friendsgiving, secret santa gathering, and faculty appreciation cards. We would love for this committee to collaborate with our behavioral health team to ensure resident wellness remains a priority for our program and an effort that is regularly evaluated and improved upon. Additionally, this committee will help leadership in planning the fall and spring residency retreats.

• Family Medicine Interest Group (FMIG) Committee

  Involves working with med students in the FMIG for various events such as procedure workshops, talks, etc. This comes with the opportunity to serve as a resident advisor to individual med students interested in going into Family Medicine.

• Program Evaluation Committee (PEC) / Curriculum Committee

  Meets on the 2nd Wednesday of each month; program and rotation evaluations as well as the current curricula are reviewed in order to identify areas of improvement and suggest ways to implement changes.

• Orientation Committee

  Collaborates with residency leadership to develop/plan an engaging and comprehensive onboarding/orientation for our incoming residents. Gathers feedback from current interns regarding areas of improvement for orientation. Additionally, assists the incoming chiefs in reviewing the resident guide and making improvements/updates as necessary. The committee will also work with the chiefs to plan the intern welcome event. Current chiefs are to work with leadership in ensuring that there is dedicated time for incoming interns to meet with the chiefs (if incoming chiefs are unavailable due to clinical duties, current chiefs can serve this role). Additionally, chiefs are to work with leadership to plan an incoming intern and chief dinner during orientation.

• Department Engagement Committee

  Informs training, programming, scholarship, and resources related to education, belonging, cultural responsiveness, recruitment, retention, and reducing health disparities. We consider all areas of the department – research, education, health care delivery, and service to ensure we are advancing our department’s mission.

• Didactics Committee

  Advocates for resident learning and surveys current residents on desired topics and self-perceived medical knowledge gaps. The committee works with the current didactic faculty and staff to invite lecturers on the desired topics and improve didactic structure with core subjects such as medicine, pediatrics, and OBGYN. Will also work with faculty on specialty tracks to increase resident exposure to family medicine career paths and academic interests.

• Food Committee

  Collaborates with program coordinators to help survey residents for preferences for didactic lunches and organizes the provision of clinic snacks to contribute to maintaining a supportive, well-fed, and healthy residency community. (only 2-3 residents, preferably one from each class).

• Patient Advisory Committee

  Serves as a collaborative forum that includes patients, community representatives, faculty, and residents. Its primary aim is to ensure that clinical education and care delivery remain aligned with the needs and values of the community. Through active engagement, the committee contributes to curriculum development, quality improvement, and advocacy efforts, while fostering cultural competence, health equity, and meaningful community partnerships.