A Message from Program Director, David Berdy, MD, CPE

In 2022, St. Mary Medical Center Family Medicine Residency began as a collaborative teaching program designed to meet the needs of both patient-centered medical care and resident-focused education in the Bucks County and Philadelphia Metropolitan region. The innovative program has allowed for training at two trusted community hospitals within Trinity Health Mid-Atlantic—St. Mary Medical Center in Bucks County and Nazareth Hospital in Northeast Philadelphia. At the heart of our program is a mission to serve the needs of underrepresented individuals in health care within the community at large.

The hub of the program is the Family Medicine Center in Bensalem. Originally, it was a maternity care center in the early 1990s; the center has grown into a full-spectrum family medicine practice including:

• Embedded behavioral health
• Podiatry care
• Acupuncture services
• Osteopathic manual therapies

The residency practice serves some of the most vulnerable in Bucks County and Northeast Philadelphia, including newly arrived refugees from the four corners of the world.

In recruiting trainees to the residency program, there is particular emphasis on ensuring that the clinicians reflect the population both in culture and language. In fact, at last count, 36 different languages were spoken by residents, faculty and staff of the Bensalem Family Medicine Center.

The Family Medicine Residency Program at St. Mary Medical Center is having a profound impact on the family medicine services offered in the region. More than 50 percent of graduates are remaining local, and 75 percent are planning to practice regionally.

What began as a collaborative teaching program has quickly become a community pillar. St. Mary Family Medicine Residency plays a foundational role in supporting, strengthening and uplifting the community through the timely provision of evidence-based, culturally sensitive and empathic care for the entire family.