Curriculum

Family Healthcare Network’s Deran Koligian Care Center, a 28,000 square foot building conveniently located on the Community Regional Medical Center (CRMC) campus, houses our Women’s Health Clinic where residents provide ambulatory care to their patients. We provide a variety of services in our clinic including well women/preventive care, prenatal visits, IUD placement, implantable contraception, office hysteroscopy and Essure placement, and pelvic floor diagnostic testing. In addition to weekly continuity clinics, residents also rotate through a variety of specialty clinics including oncology, colposcopy/dysplasia, REI, emergency room follow-up, urgent care and FPMRS (female pelvic medicine and reconstructive surgery).  

Our L & D unit at CRMC consists of 22 L/D/R (labor / delivery / recovery) rooms, 3 dedicated OR suites and a 10 bed triage unit. The OB team delivers a full range of obstetrical care and both low and high risk patients are primary patients of the resident service and all management decisions and procedures are the responsibility of the residents with consultation and assistance from the general OB/GYN faculty and perinatologists. The residency training program performs approximately 2,800 deliveries a year, one third of which are high risk. Faculty members are always present at board rounds and in-house faculty members are available for consultation and assistance 24 hours a day.

Our Gynecologic team provides care in the inpatient and ambulatory settings at CRMC and the Women’s Health Center.

Residents become proficient in a comprehensive set of diagnostic and therapeutic procedures including laparotomy, vaginal, straight-stick laparoscopy, and robotic hysterectomy techniques. A monthly GYN attending is assigned to the team and conducts regular teaching rounds as well as consulting on patient care.

We provide consultation services to a wide variety of providers including the Emergency Department, Pediatrics, Internal Medicine, and Family and Community Medicine. In addition to the surgical experience from operating on our primary patients, senior residents receive extensive procedural experience with volunteer community faculty members increasing the breadth and depth of surgical training as well as allowing residents to become familiar with the community physicians and their practices.

In the ambulatory settings, residents will have dedicated clinics in the areas of ultrasounds, colposcopy, contraception, oncology and reproductive endocrinology and infertility.

Our Gynecologic Oncology team provides care in the inpatient and ambulatory settings. The gynecologic oncology service provides consultation and surgical expertise for a large number of community physicians and practices in the region. Resident experiences include diagnostic procedures, GYN oncology surgeries, and end of life care. Residents operate one-on-one with the gynecological oncology faculty and provide surgical services at Community Regional Medical Center, and Clovis Community Hospital, as well as staffing a busy outpatient gynecologic oncology clinic at the Women’s Health Center and working one-on-one with a gynecologic oncologist in their private practice.

In August 2018, Community Medical Centers opened a comprehensive cancer center.  The Cancer Institute is a 100,000 square-foot facility that is “the first of its kind in the San Joaquin Valley” and is home to 1 of 3 PET/CT scanners in the Western United States. The Cancer Institute is treating regional cancer cases and conducting oncology research and clinical trials with UCSF Fresno.

The UCSF Fresno OBGYN Department is staffed with two FPMRS faculty Our residents receive one-on-one education in urodynamic studies, cystoscopy, a variety of pelvic floor and incontinence surgical procedures and techniques with medical and surgical treatments options.  Patients are referred to our pelvic floor medicine clinic from both our primary care practice and from private community physicians and receive a comprehensive urologic and pelvic floor evaluation.

At UCSF Fresno, REI care occurs at two sites; Women’s Health Center and the Women’s Specialty & Fertility Center. The clinic at the Women’s Health Center, supervised by Dr. Carolina Sueldo and residents provide hands-on medical and surgical care to the underserved population during their 2nd year of training. In the 3rd year, residents rotate to the Women’s Specialty & Fertility Center in the private practice setting to gain more extensive experience in infertility care and in-vitro fertilization. This facility not only provides state-of-the-art clinical care but is also highly productive in research. Dr. Carolina Sueldo, a former OB/GYN graduate of UCSF Fresno, teaches residents surgical and medical management of a diverse complement of patients and conditions. In addition, numerous research studies have been completed by residents in collaboration with the Women’s Specialty & Fertility Center.

The UCSF Fresno OBGYN Department is staffed with three MFM faculty who provide perinatal services throughout the Central San Joaquin Valley. In addition to providing services in a Federally Qualified Health Center located in Visalia, our department operates two local perinatology practices; University Women’s Specialty Center and University Perinatal Associates.

Our MFM team provides care in the outpatient and inpatient settings. We accept outpatient referrals and maternal transports from more than fifteen hospitals in the region resulting in one of the largest perinatal practices and inpatient services in the San Joaquin Valley. The perinatal practices and hospital serve as the hub of a growing regional perinatology and transport program serving six counties with a combined delivery volume of approximately 50,000 deliveries per year.

Through the University Women’s Specialty Center and the inpatient service, residents fully participate in the care of our high risk patients and receive hands-on training in cervical cerclage, external cephalic version, amniocentesis and other high-risk procedures. As a California approved prenatal diagnostic center, we receive a large volume of genetic screening and nuchal translucency referrals. Consultations are provided for medical complications of pregnancy, preconception counseling, diabetes in pregnancy, fetal medicine, isoimmunization, and fetal and genetic abnormalities.

Under the direct supervision of the faculty and sonographers, Residents receive ultrasound training during their 1st and 4th program year at two locations: University Women’s Specialty Center and the University Perinatal Associates.  This experience includes training in cervical length, nuchal translucency, basic and targeted transabdominal, Doppler, and 3-D assessment as well as fetal echocardiography. The University Women’s Specialty Center is accredited by the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine in both obstetric ultrasound and fetal echocardiography and performs more than 500 non-stress tests and 2500 ultrasound procedures per month.

Monthly, we collaborate with neonatology and genetics faculty to provide a Perinatal Morbidity and Mortality Conference which covers a wide variety of topics including state-of-the art reviews of evidence-based care.

Through this diverse high risk obstetric population, numerous ongoing research projects in preterm labor, diabetes, ultrasound, and other aspects of maternal and fetal medicine are available.