Welcome to the Family Medicine Residency!
The Department of Family Medicine started in July 2012 and is an integral part of the Aga Khan University Medical College, East Africa.
Primary care, and in particular Family Medicine, is the foundation for a sustainable health care system, necessary in confronting Africa’s burden of preventable disease and contributing towards its social and economic progress. The mission of the programme in Family Medicine is to enable motivated physicians to develop the competencies of generalists which are essential for addressing the health care needs not only of the individual, but also of the family and the community.
Residents in our postgraduate program are trained to be on the frontline of primary care, education and research. Our curriculum is designed to provide residents with a broad array of competencies, including knowledge and skills in the major disciplines, communication, professional and team-work skills. This will enable them to provide patient-centered care to people with a diverse range of needs – from preventive care to acute care and hospitalization to management of chronic diseases. Trainings take place in a wide variety of settings ranging from tertiary and secondary level hospitals, international electives, the inner city out-reach clinics to the semi-urban primary medical centers and more remote rural communities. This provides residents with the flexibility to individualize care to the context of the patient and optimizes future career opportunities.
Our residents have the opportunity to work with our faculty, both trained locally and internationally, who are expert teachers and provide mentorship and are dedicated to improving their teaching and research methods. We are highly committed to research activities that help define the present and future of Family medicine and provide supervision to our residents in finalizing and publishing their thesis-projects.
To facilitate learning, we make use of bedside interactive teaching, case-based learning and peer- to peer learning, thereby promoting deeper learning and sharing of evidence-based knowledge.
We warmly welcome you to our department and look forward to working with you!
Dr Catherine Gathu, MBChb, MMED
Programme Director, Family Medicine Department
Aga Khan University Medical College, East Africa
