Soldotna: as Elena told me before I went, it really does live up to the hype!
The physicians at Peninsula Internal Medicine are all incredibly smart and thoughtful, and they practice so deep into the Internal Medicine subspecialties, even as more specialty physicians have arrived to practice in the central peninsula. As a result, their patients are diverse, with interesting/challenging medical problems, and they are as expert in managing anxiety and hospice care as they as they are in IBD, complex diabetes, and procedures (including EGDs, colonoscopies, cardiac stress tests, cardioversion, reading TTEs, endometrial biopsy, paracenteses). They keep up with multiple journals and subspecialty literature, they watch UW grand rounds (broadcast live from the hospital across the street), they are very involved in work at the hospital across the street. Despite this, they have incredible work/life balance, and their backgrounds are full of global travel (and Iditarod!), which makes for lots of interesting life/medical experiences. They all have different clinical interests and strengths that are very complementary, and although residents work mostly with Dr. Bramante (who is fantastic), there are opportunities to learn from everyone. And the clinic itself is perhaps the most high-functioning primary care clinic I have ever seen! It’s hard to overstate how friendly and welcoming everyone is.
Outside of clinic (which is usually 4 days a week), there are a multitude of things to do in town (coffee galore, cross country skiing or running on an extensive network of well-maintained trails, yoga, climbing wall) and stunning hikes and day/overnight trips outside of town to Seward, Homer, the Portage Glacier, and more. I ate so much moose (that Dr. Kelley had personally hunted and prepared!). You are close enough to Anchorage that you could sightsee on weekends with the resident at ANMC, if you wanted to. They maintain a ‘Get a Life!’ list for the Kenai peninsula.
I learned a lot this month, and left with a lot of professional inspiration, but the whole thing felt like a wonderful vacation among really nice people. Enjoy!!
