Core Residency Training
Throughout the two-year program, Occupational Medicine residents participate in core training activities that include participation in two COEH clinics, clinical case conferences, the residency didactic seminar, journal club, quality improvement projects, and worksite visits.
In addition to clinical training received in field-site rotations during the practicum phase, residents receive clinical training by participating in two Occupational and Environmental Medicine clinics.
One clinic is based at the Center for Occupational and Environmental Health, which is located next to the School of Medicine on the UC Irvine campus. This clinic functions as a regional consulting and referral center. Appointments include pre-placement and surveillance examinations, fitness-for-duty evaluations, and “case evaluations,” which can involve assessment of complex work or environment-related issues in persons referred by employers, other specialists, public health agencies, individuals or other sources. For case evaluations, residents interview and examine the patient; discuss the patient with faculty members assigned to the clinic session; direct the diagnostic work-up; arrive at a decision regarding the diagnosis, and provide the patient with a diagnosis, determine whether the condition is work-related and give a prognosis.
The other OEM clinic is at UC Irvine Medical Center, Orange County’s only university hospital. This clinic is the employee health service for the medical center and provides comprehensive workers compensation and employer services for a range of work places in the area. Under the supervision of attending faculty members, residents manage workplace injuries and illness, as well as return-to-work determinations and medical surveillance examinations.
Residents will also participate in the Long Beach Veterans Affairs (LBVA) Occupational and Environmental Health clinics as part of they continuity clinics. Here, they also have the opportunity to rotate within various departments at LBVA such as pulmonology, dermatology, PTSD clinics, radiology, etc.
Residents attend two clinic sessions per week in either of these clinics throughout the residency program. Residents may also do a longer rotation at the medical center clinic during the practicum phase. Residents are supervised, but they are given progressive responsibility for patient care.
Elective courses in the program allow residents to complete the required course work for the preventive medicine program. Required or commonly taken elective courses include: Principles of Toxicology, Target Organ Toxicology (2 courses), Experimental Design and Interpretation of Toxicology Studies, Neurotoxicology, Inhalation Toxicology, Environmental Toxicology, Industrial Toxicology, Toxicology Seminar, Data Analysis (statistics), Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Management of Health Care Organizations or Public Health Cost-Effectiveness Analysis, Health Psychology, and Environmental Epidemiology, Risk Communication, Latinos/Latinas and Medical Care: Contemporary Issues, etc. More information can be found here.
The OEM residency program sponsors a weekly didactic seminar in which residents are required to participate during the practicum phase. This is possible because “full-time” field-site rotations are four days per week, allowing residents to spend one day a week at the program.
Seminar topics are taken from ACGME requirements for residency training in occupational medicine, with additional consideration to topics presented in major textbooks on occupational and environmental medicine and to recommendations on core competencies defined by the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. The residency program identifies a systematic list of topics and then identifies program faculty, clinical faculty and guest speakers to present the topics for the residents.
This clinical case conference serves as the attending rounds for the COEM clinic and allows residents to discuss case issues, case management strategies, clinical toxicology and occupational medicine principles. Residents rotate in presenting clinical cases they have been involved in to address clinical questions with supporting evidence-based literature
Journal club is held monthly. Its purpose is to teach the residents how to critically read the scientific literature and to provide a mechanism for reviewing current issues in occupational and environmental medicine. Under faculty supervision, each resident in turn is required to identify a recent important article and other relevant citations then prepare a critique. The critique is presented in journal club to the faculty and other residents. All program faculty regularly attend the journal club and participate in the teaching. Principles of study design, epidemiology, clinical toxicology and data analysis are emphasized in the discussions.
The core training includes work-site visits with program faculty. Examples of recent work-site visits include Disneyland, Orange County Landfills, Aerospace Corporation, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, Solar Turbines, Exponent, Air Pollution Health Effects Laboratory at UC Irvine, Allergan Pharmaceuticals, an Exxon-Mobil refinery, Exide-GNB Industrial Power, Steelcase Manufacturing, Toyota Car Manufacturing, Kimberly Clark Paper Mill, Mansfield Plumbing, a Huntington Beach school district, the Orange County Health Care Agency, the San Diego Poison Control Center, and UC Irvine’s Environmental Health and Safety facility. Residents also visit work sites during the Cal-OSHA rotation.
UCI COEH launched the first bi-annual symposium on occupational and environmental health in February 2020 titled “Hot Topics in Wildfires: Past, Present, and Future Health Risks”. Internationally and nationally renowned subject matter experts presented at this symposium that was attended by physicians, toxicologists, industrial hygienists, nurse practitioners, researchers, firefighters and public officials from City of Irvine. Residents had the opportunity to introduce speakers and network with colleagues. These symposia serve as an educational as well as a networking opportunity for the occupational medicine residents.
Residents also may attend other School of Medicine seminars, including the Department of Medicine Grand Rounds and noon conferences, as well as those presented by the Department of Epidemiology and the Environmental Health Sciences program. The Department of Medicine and the school sponsors a range of residencies and fellowships that offer OEM residents substantial opportunities to participate in research and clinical seminars.
