Medical School Grads Are Ready to Serve You Ice Cream

The public is invited to meet Eisenhower Medical Center's first class of medical residents at an ice cream social tomorrow.

The 22 residents -- medical school graduates who will specialize in family and internal medicine -- are the first training class at Eisenhower's School of Graduate Medical Education and Research. They start orientation this week, and will scoop ice cream for members of the community at noon Friday at the hospital's Cafe 34, spokeswoman Lee Rice said.

"We've assembled a world-class team of medical educators and have built state-of-the-art facilities to foster the highest quality educational experience possible," said G. Aubrey Serfling, Eisenhower's president and CEO.

Rice said the School of Graduate Medical Education and Research received a three-year accreditation earlier this year. For the past few years, Eisenhower offered internships to third-year medical students. Most of the new residents will be at Eisenhower at least three years, she said.

The residents, who hail from institutions from around the world, will begin their rotations July 8.     The family medicine residents will be based at Eisenhower's George and Julia Argyros Health Center in La Quinta and will spend the first three weeks seeing patients at the Center for Family Medicine before starting hospital rotations in August. The internal medicine residents will work at the main hospital in Rancho Mirage, and will spend half a day each week at the Joel Hirschberg, MD, Center for Internal Medicine clinic.

The clinics are open to new patients, Rice said.