Comanche County Memorial Hospital is celebrating 10 years of its residency program. Residents are at both CCMH’s ER and at the Family First Clinic.
Once doctors complete medical school, they then have to go through a residency program to get hands-on experience before they’re allowed to practice by themselves.
“It was a bit of a journey to get the residency off the — go ahead and getting it started, but we were confident that we had what it took to run the residency and I’ll say without a question this is such a unique situation here,” Dr. William Bickell said.
Dr. Bickell says that’s because they’re located in region three and there’s no hospitals with their capabilities within roughly an hour’s drive in either direction.
“Everything happening in this region is going to come to this facility,” Dr. Bickell said. “If you go to Oklahoma City, for example, the residency is at one location and the trauma center is not where the residency is. The children’s hospital is not where the residency is. The heart hospital is not where the residency is. We are all of those here.”
Dr. Troy Harden, at Family First Clinic, says they currently have 14 doctors in their family practice residency program. He says they’ve graduated seven classes so far and some of the graduated doctors have stayed in the community.
“What a residency is, is on-the-job training after they go through medical school,” Dr. Harden said. “In most instances, in the United States, it’s required before you go into private or employed practice.”
“I like watching the light come on in their eyes,” Dr. Harden said. “Their year they’re doing their best to do what they’ve learned to do. By somewhere between their second to third year they transition to really being a full-fledged doctor and when that light changes, that’s what I like.”
Dr. Harden is at LCHC after practicing in a rural area for almost 30 years. He says he’s really passionate about putting the patient first.
“I feel like I can help them with my experience to pass it on to them, so I feel like I’m helping more patients,” Dr. Harden said. “My history has been magnified so to speak.”
Dr. Bickell says they’ve graduated 41 doctors through the ER program and currently have 18 residents. He says a lot of them like being in an area where they see a lot of seriously injured patients.
“We have people that are not from this area and they have really embraced and enjoyed living here with their families and after residency, I’d say probably more than half have established roots in southwest Oklahoma,” Dr. Bickell said.
Dr. Bickell says having the program has been a huge benefit to both the doctors doing their residency at the hospital and the residents of the community.
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