Lynchburg Family Medicine Residency Program

For over 45 years, Lynchburg Family Medicine has played a pivotal role in the health and well-being of Central Virginia. As Centra’s oldest practice, we enjoy the reputation of building a broad base of patients of all ages and backgrounds. Our mission of “Educating Family Physicians through Excellent Patient Care” reflects our dual role of providing a medical home for continuous, compassionate, and competent health care while developing the clinical skills of resident physicians and preparing them for the challenges of health care.

Established in 1975, we are the only residency sponsored by Centra Health, Inc. Our faculty holds academic appointments with the University of Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth University, and Liberty University.

Residents care for patients in our beautiful office in Lynchburg. They receive a solid base of inpatient training and care for patients in Lynchburg General Hospital and Virginia Baptist Hospital units. Relationship continuity between the physicians and patients is valued, and residents may continue to attend to their patients in local nursing homes and home visits.

Lynchburg (LYH) is a quintessential Virginian city with a leafy, historic veneer and an industrial heart. Its downtown and many neighborhoods offer a rich cultural character, a vital sense of the past and a growing contemporary energy. It attracts residents, companies, and visitors because it offers a revitalized and walkable downtown with eclectic shops and welcoming proprietors, a lushly green riverfront crisscrossed with trails and ways to explore, and opportunities in industries that are helping define the future.  Our 80,000 residents are smart, young, and diverse.

• Enjoy an excellent faculty-to-resident ratio.
• Care for a diverse population and have access to patients in over 750 hospital beds; in state-of-the-art hospitals and diverse medical specialties.
• Train in one of the busiest Emergency Departments in Virginia.
• Experience a realistic and humane call schedule with a “night float.”
• Work in an attractive, free-standing office, specifically designed for Family Medicine located near the hospital.
• Learn in a small group practice model through a program specifically designed for residents.
• Experience practice in rural or small communities through training. 
• Take advantage of a large variety of sport medicine opportunities. 
• Be responsible for direct and primary patient care with close faculty back-up and supervision.
• Broaden your education with significant elective time, which allows residents to tailor their training practice goals, including the opportunity for an international experience.
• Learn in a community where Family Medicine represents the second largest medical specialty.

Lynchburg (LYH) is a quintessential Virginian city with a leafy, historic veneer and an industrial heart. Its downtown and many neighborhoods offer a rich cultural character, a vital sense of the past and a growing contemporary energy. It attracts residents, companies, and visitors because it offers a revitalized and walkable downtown with eclectic shops and welcoming proprietors, a lushly green riverfront crisscrossed with trails and ways to explore, and opportunities in industries that are helping define the future.  Our 80,000 residents are smart, young, and diverse.

More reasons people move here

MISSION

Educating family physicians through excellent patient care.

GOALS

• We will teach and provide comprehensive, coordinated, and continuous family-centered care.
• We will teach through example, intellectual curiosity, empathy, collaboration, self-directed learning, and a balanced approach to work, family and self.
• We will attend to the psychosocial and medical needs of our patients and their families.
• We will support one another in our efforts to make contributions in areas of scholarship, community service, and leadership.

Letter from our Program Director

Welcome and thank you for considering Centra’s Lynchburg Family Medicine Residency (LFMR) program, located in Lynchburg, Virginia. 

Our program has a 44-year history of fulfilling our mission of “Educating Family Physicians through Excellent Patient Care” by providing full-scope family medicine services to our community. Since its founding, LFMR has produced over 180 board-certified family physicians; over 60% of those have stayed in Virginia, and over 40% have remained in the region. 

I myself graduated from LFMR in 2009. I felt well-prepared to enter the world of primary care as a community physician who followed patients of all ages in outpatient and inpatient settings. Because I wanted to contribute further to the growth and development of future family physicians, I returned to our program to teach. This program is special to me because the residents, faculty, nurses, and staff support one another and have truly become like an extended family.    

Lynchburg and central Virginia sit just east of the Blue Ridge Mountain range and offer many outdoor activities, including running, hiking, camping, fishing, biking, boating, kayaking, and canoeing. The city of Lynchburg is rich in history and offers a variety of restaurants and cultural events throughout the year. Newcomers to the area can sample the culture of Lynchburg at “First Fridays”, a monthly festival-like event in downtown Lynchburg featuring local restaurants, musicians, and artists.  

Our training environment prepares our graduates to be American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM) certified family medicine physicians who provide comprehensive primary care to their future communities. Our residency clinic – Lynchburg Family Medicine Residency Clinic –provides a medical home for patients in central Virginia, including maternity care; and, each resident serves as a primary care provider (PCP) for a diverse patient panel during their three years of training. Our clinic has been the center of practice transformation for our area, providing an excellent training environment for our residents.

In 2014, we were the first NCQA-recognized, Level 3, Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) in our area. In 2018, we became the first clinic in Lynchburg to develop a multidisciplinary care management team that coordinates the skills of our practice-employed social worker with our nurse care navigator, our behavioral health faculty, and various representatives from community resource programs.

This team works with our residents and faculty to increase provider awareness of Lynchburg’s unique social determinants of health and improve our identification of patients with barriers to care. The care management team works with the patient and PCP to develop a comprehensive care plan tailored to each patient’s needs and goals.     

Our residents also provide care to our LFMR patients in the inpatient setting at Centra’s Lynchburg General Hospital (LGH) and Virginia Baptist Hospital (VBH). LFMR residents gain much of their hospital-based training experience at LGH which has 368 licensed beds and is home to the second busiest emergency department in the state. As a solo residency program at Centra, our residents train with multiple specialists in the area either one-on-one with attendings or in small teams on certain teaching services. We encourage our residents to develop an interest in teaching, and our residents have multiple opportunities to teach medical students. The faculty at LFMR bring a broad range of experiences and backgrounds to the program and they are committed to teaching residents how to self-identify areas for improvement and develop strategies to become life-long learners.

This year, we have a renewed focus on provider wellness. Earlier this year, our residents and faculty rose to the challenge of providing much-needed care during the COVID 19 Pandemic in a safe manner. To support our residents, we have adjusted our inpatient schedule to offer a rigorous yet humane schedule and provide ample training opportunities consistent with recommendations from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) on clinical education and work hours. We also focus on reducing administrative tasks and total time spent after hours documenting in the electronic medical record for our faculty and residents. 

Our goal during the recruitment process is to find resident physicians who fit well with our personality as a program. The residents who excel at our program are hard-working, can embrace change, be flexible, are team players, are interested in teaching, embrace all available training opportunities, and are committed to self-reflection and improvement. We feel these characteristics are necessary to become an effective family physician.

As you learn more about our program and central Virginia, I hope you can see the benefits of training in our supportive atmosphere and living in our beautiful community.

Best wishes,
Lori Nelson-Madison, MD
Program Director

The AFMRD Program Director Recognition Awards are bestowed upon residency programs directors to recognize their contribution to family medicine. Program directors earn awards through accomplishments in the areas of tenure, training, performance, and advocacy.

Awardees at the bronze level must have held the position of program director for at least three years; prepared and successfully presented at professional workshops or seminars or authored publications in refereed scientific journals; encouraged professional development in their peers, along with themselves, through family medicine-centered conferences, workshops, and programs; given service to local, regional or state family medicine organizations; completed a family medicine advocacy course; and corresponded with local, state or federal legislature regarding family medicine priorities.

The AFMRD was founded in 1990 and represents nearly 800 family medicine program directors nationwide. 

High Evaluation Award 2015-2016, 

The VCU Department of Family Medicine and Population has awarded  Centra Medical Group – Lynchburg Family Medicine Residency with the High Evaluation Award for 2015–2016 and in 2019–2020 for excellence in teaching. Faculty who teach in courses or clerkships are considered for high evaluation awards. Award recipients must receive a ranking of excellent or higher on student evaluations. We  are proud to be an award recipient and continually strive to promote a positive learning environment filled with great experiences. 

We would like to thank the following community partners for their support: 

For more information,  contact:
Patty Irwin, C-TAGME, Residency Coordinator
434.200.6155