MERCEDES — Nestled among some of the poorest colonias in the area, elderly homes and public schools is a new family practice clinic that will host the first-of-its-kind residency program for graduate students at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.
MERCEDES — Nestled among some of the poorest colonias in the area, elderly homes and public schools is a new family practice clinic that will host the first-of-its-kind residency program for graduate students at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.
Knapp Medical Center in collaboration with UTRGV unveiled its new 13,800-square-foot family practice clinic which will house the first Graduate Medical Education, or GME, residency program in the Mid- Valley area.
“This is very important,” said UTRGV President Guy Bailey about the new endeavor. “It expands our ability to provide health care. It expands the training options for residents. And it also cements our partnership with Knapp and our relationship with the city of Mercedes.”
The clinic is scheduled to open its doors to patients at the end of August and will then be the main home of the inaugural residents of the program — Dr. Eddy Berges, Dr. Diego Moreno, Dr. Eliana Costantino Burgazzi, Dr. Miguel A. Sanchez Rivas, Dr. Carolina Gomez de Ziegler and Dr. Marita del Pilar Sanchez Sierra — all with previous medical experience, mostly in other countries.
“Where I used to work we could go out to the mountain and the villages to really see what the need of the patients was,” said Sanchez Sierra in Spanish about her 10 years of experience practicing in Peru. “Coming to the Valley, the population is different but there is also a large Mexican and Latino population so I feel right at home.”
Sanchez Sierra moved to the Valley with her husband who works for the Knapp Medical Center in the area of infectious disease, but even as she had 10 years of primary care experience under her belt, she had to relearn and get certified in the United States to continue.
“The road was hard but my passion is being able to tend to patients,” she said. “I couldn’t be home without doing what I love. … Now I think I’ll be really happy here because we’ll be able to see all types of patients and go out to the communities.”
The city of Mercedes donated two acres of land to build the facility right across the street from South Texas school district’s Medical High School. And in 2016, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating board awarded the university $450,000 for the program.
Having experienced residents, who preferably knew Spanish, and were interested in staying to practice in the area were three important factors during the search, said Eron Manusov, program director for family and preventative medicine at UTRGV.
Experience was especially important for the program considering they will not only be the first to train under Knapp doctors, he added, but they will also be the ones who will train the new faculty how to work with residents in their turf.
“You have to teach the community faculty, because they know what they are doing and they are amazing, but they haven’t been teaching necessarily as much,” he said referring to the doctors who will be teaching these residents.
Due to the need for accreditation for the program, the search for the six residents began late, he said, but the university received help from the hospital’s staff to vet the 30 applicants for the six spots.
The three-year residency program at the clinic will eventually host a cohort of 18. Leading the initial six, will be Dr. Miguel Tello, associate program director and a Valley native. The residents began practicing out of Knapp Medical Center this month, he said, but will move to the clinic as soon as it opens.
His main goals as the clinic opens are to introduce the residents to the community, the community to the training clinic itself as a healthcare, and also introduce the local medical community to the clinic, he said.
“We do continue medical education for the local medical community, but to have it come from a point of residency is totally new to the area, Also hopefully in the future medical students will come, and also high-schoolers will come, those who have interest in medicine.”
