Family practice residency teaches Christian service

Posted: 9/29/06

Family practice residency
teaches Christian service

By Elizabeth Staples

Communications Intern

HARLINGEN—Valley Baptist Medical Center’s family practice residency program not only provides medical training, but also teaches health care professionals how to help from the heart.

Bruce Leibert has been working in residency programs with his wife since they married 22 years ago.

The need for a residency program that trained residents in medicine and the gospel simultaneously became apparent almost immediately.

“We opened the doors of our (family practice residency) training program in July 1996. Forty-two graduates and 11 years later, we’ve seen God really do incredible things in the lives of faculty, residents and the community,” Leibert said. The program offers a three-year residency at Valley Baptist Medical Center in Harlingen. Trained by seven doctors on staff, five residents graduate each year. They are equipped in a variety of medical fields including family medicine, internal medicine, obstetrics/gynecology, pediatrics and general surgery, Leibert said. But it doesn’t stop there.

“This program is different from most because of the three C’s—Christianity, curriculum and community outreach,” he said.

Christianity permeates the program. Physicians are trained spiritually through family retreats, daily devotions, examples of Christian doctors and Bible studies. Every day, they pray in the name of Jesus with most of the patients, Leibert said. “I’d say 99.9 percent of the patients want to pray with the doctors. They’ve never seen anything like this before,” Leibert said.

The family practice residency program curriculum is different from other residency programs. Leibert describes it as an apprenticeship model in which the doctors work in the clinic, and the majority of their time is spent on the floor.

“We have the first-ever blended curriculum,” Leibert said.

Community outreach involves weekly work in areas where the income is low and the needs are great.

“We go to colonias, small communities without electricity or air conditioning, each Wednesday and reach out to fill their needs,” Leibert said.

For the past six summers, the Summer Medical Institute has brought many young medical students to the Valley where they learn to share their faith.

“We pray that we would be pleasing to the Lord in our attitude and actions as an institution,” Leibert said. “The truth must be shared so lives can be saved—anything else would be wrong for us.”