Message from the Program Director

Thank you for your interest in the Emergency Medicine Residency Program at St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Stockton, California. Our medical center began training residents in 2018 with the start of our Emergency Medicine and Family Medicine residency programs. Now, in the summer of 2023 I am excited to take the helm of the EM Residency Program and hope to continue its tradition of training exceptionally skilled, compassionate, and well-rounded physicians.

After completing my emergency medicine residency training at Yale-New Haven Hospital, I went on to do a fellowship in Medical Education Leadership. This fellowship focused on residency administration as well as the intricacies of teaching medical students and residents. As I sought a position after fellowship, I discovered St. Joseph’s Medical Center had everything that I was looking for clinically, academically, and administratively. Upon joining the EM faculty at SJMC I worked to start the Transitional Year Residency Program in 2020 which is sponsored by emergency medicine.

From a clinical standpoint, SJMC offers robust training through its high volumes and high acuity. In 2019, the city of Stockton was named the most diverse city in the country and is surrounded by an even larger agricultural area of the central valley. In total, our medical center has a catchment area of close to 1 million individuals and out emergency department had over 100,000 patient visits this past year. This is also a largely medically underserved area which means you will see patients with complex, late stages of diseases with incredible frequency. Personally, this is exactly the type of clinical environment I wanted coming out of training and believe it provides our residents with unparalleled clinical opportunities. 

Academically, our EM program offers resident outstanding training in quality improvement, research, EM sub-specialty training as well as ensuring all of the core content of the specialty is covered. During my time here, I have been impressed with the research and quality improvement opportunities available to faculty and residents at our community hospital. Additionally, faculty for the residency are a diverse group with extensive clinical and academic experience including fellowship trained EMS, Ultrasound, SIM, Wilderness Medicine and Medical Toxicology physicians. As a result, residents easily find mentorship and elective rotation opportunities in these and other sub-specialty fields. Our didactic series follows the ABEM Core Content which repeats every 18-months to ensure residents cover the core material twice. We use multiple modalities for our didactics including simulation, lectures, workshops, and small group discussions.

One of my favorite aspects about SJMC is the comradery that you feel at the very start of joining any of our programs. We strive to create a supportive environment both within the EM program as well as across specialties. We are continually looking for additional opportunities to support our resident wellness and prepare our graduates for other aspects of practicing medicine that extend beyond medical knowledge and skills.

As EM Program Director, I am extremely proud of the program I have inherited and look forward to working tirelessly to continue its development into a program with a diverse graduate class exceptionally prepared to care for any patient who comes through the door.

Brian Wood, MD
Program Director, Emergency Medicine