News Photo by Michael Gonzalez Alcona Health Center welcomes both resident physicians with banners of their faces in front of its Ossineke office on Wednesday.

ALPENA — In an effort to provide training and mentorship in a rural setting, Alcona Health Center recently established a family medicine residency program in Alpena County.

Resident physicians Christian Grant and David Wesphal will complete their residency at the health system’s Ossineke office on U.S.-23 South, under the supervision of Dr. Michelle LaFave.

The new program is a collaboration with MyMichigan Medical Center Midland.

During a patient’s appointment, a resident physician goes through a patient’s medical history with them and consults with their mentor and other resident physicians. After research and thinking, the group comes up with a diagnosis and creates a plan of action for the patient.

Grant and Westphal say this all happens within a patient’s appointment, but should only add an extra 10 minutes. All of this is meant to prepare resident physicians to come up with their own conclusions later on.

“I think, being able to be a part of a program like this – associated with not only an established residency program, but an established state level program,” Grant said. “Using that to build something new is really an exciting proposition.”

Dr. John MacMaster, Chief Medical Officer for Alcona Health Center, said their training should give the doctors the skills to properly treat patients and, hopefully, make the resident physicians want to stay here.

“We expect to see from having training done here in the Alpena area that the young doctors will get settled into the community and we’ll have a better chance of keeping them for the rest of their career,” MacMaster said. “We have a great hospital and many wonderful patients that would benefit from their care.”

Both doctors have been out of college for about one year. They said they chose this program to help serve an underserved community, treat patients, and learn more in the field.

“I think… we’re going to get a lot of upfront exposure to things that residents may not see,” Westphal said. “Because [Alpena is] not the frontline practitioners, and cities and stuff like that.”

Grant and Westphal are working and training with Midland, as well, but said they’re already seeing new patients and hope to get more in their roster.

Alcona Health Center is happy to have both doctors there and are anticipating two more to come in next year.

“It’s good for the residents,” MacMaster said. “It’ll be good for the community, because well trained and living in this community, it’s likely that we’ll have a better supply of young, well trained physicians in the future.”