MEDIA ADVISORY

June 5, 2002

UCSF FRESNO GRADUATES CLASS OF 2002 RESIDENT PHYSICIANS THIS THURSDAY

The University of California San Francisco, Fresno Medical Education Program (UCSF Fresno MEP) will graduate more than 60 physicians in a ceremony to be held Thursday, June 6 from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Copper River County Club (11500 North Friant Road) in Fresno.

About 30 of the doctors will remain in the Fresno vicinity and Central Valley to care for area residents. Among them:

• Four of the seven graduating pediatricians will join the faculty at Children’s Hospital Central California in Madera.
• Another four physicians will remain with UCSF Fresno as faculty members or chief residents.
• Family practice physicians Diego Allende, DO, and William Garnica, MD, plan to purchase an urgent care center in Fresno.
• Internal medicine resident Adria Winter, MD, will head to the south Valley to join the emergency medicine residency program at Kern Medical Center in Bakersfield.

Graduation highlights include:  

• Graduation address by Deborah C. Stewart, MD, associate dean of the UCSF Fresno Medical Education Program.
• Presentation of the prestigious Kaiser Award for Excellence in Teaching. Of the four Kaiser awards presented by the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine, one is given to an outstanding faculty member in the Fresno program. 
• Other awards include: Outstanding First-Year Resident, Outstanding Resident Teacher, Outstanding Attending Teacher, Outstanding Non-Physician Teacher and Borba Awards for Outstanding Research. 

Background

Each June, medical school graduates arrive in Fresno to begin their residency training, lasting anywhere from one to five years. Medical resident specialties offered by UCSF Fresno include: emergency medicine, pediatrics, family medicine, internal medicine, psychiatry, surgery, and obstetrics/gynecology.

Since its inception in 1974, UCSF Fresno Medical Education Program has graduated approximately 60 physicians every year, totaling more than 2,000 to date.

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