Rob Tiller, M.D., Program Director: So the mission of our residency program is to train family physicians to be clinically excellent and confident to go out and practice in primarily rural areas doing full-scope family medicine. Now a lot of our graduates become hospitalists or they’re practicing in urban underserved areas. Some are even practicing international venues doing medical missions, but it’s just a great place to train. We have kind of a perfect storm for family medicine training here. We’re the only residency program at a large hospital in a rural area. Greenwood County has about 60–65,000 people, but the rural counties surrounding us have 200,000 people, so they all feed into our hospital, so our residents get to see and do everything. And that’s really what you need to be able to go out and practice in underserved areas — you need to be confident and comfortable with whatever walks in in the doors. Our residents get that training here.

Davis Reed, M.D.: So I rotated here as a third year during med school as a part of my family medicine rotation and pretty quickly just fell in love with the program here and the people.

Helen Grey, M.D.: The goal of this program is to make us really great family physicians and to have the ability to practice broad-spectrum family medicine. And even though I haven’t experienced all of the rotations so far, I’ve already been challenged in what I’m doing day to day.

Michael Simhachalam, M.D.: After the interview process, I felt without a doubt that this was the family that I wanted to belong to.

Meg O’Sell, M.D.: I remember having a blast at the interview and just thinking that this is the kind of learning environment that I knew I would thrive in. One of the reasons I chose this program was for its training and I think that this program offered the best training that I could get to become the family medicine doctor that I want to be.

Angelique Mole, M.D.: A couple of things specifically here at our program that I feel like has prepared me well is that I see all the way down from our faculty to the staff that’s here, the doctors, really dedicated to caring for people and not just being another number in the clinic or another disease process, but really helping us to practice medicine well.

Rob Tiller, M.D., Program Director: We’re really proud of our 100% board pass rate. Ever since the program started 30 years ago, nobody has ever failed the boards on the first try, and our residents consistently score within the top 5 to 10 percent of the nation on their American Board of Family Medicine exam.

Meg O’Sell, M.D.: Cost of living is great. I’ve been able to find a place that is so comfortable, probably the nicest apartment that I’ve lived in, and spend about the same that I was spending in medical school.

Helen Grey, M.D.: I love Greenwood so far. So like I said, I moved here from Charleston, South Carolina, which is a bigger place, pretty busy, a lot of tourists and stuff. So this is a big transition for me, but I love the small town feel of Greenwood.

Michael Simhachalam, M.D.: Greenwood was a pleasant surprise. Greenville is really close by and so is Columbia and Augusta. And for me, especially, I really enjoy doing things outside. So I was really happy to see how much mountain biking is around here, as well as hiking and kayaking, which is really cool.

Davis Reed, M.D.: I had never heard of Greenwood before. I rotated here as a third year, but it really is a great small town community where you can feel like a respected member of the community and really get involved.

Angelique Mole, M.D.: Three words that best describe this program. I’m gonna go with, I think, rigorous for sure, and excellent and familial. I love that we have a family atmosphere here, so I would go with those three words.

Davis Reed, M.D.: I would say the first one would be family. Just everyone here is so welcoming and warm and you just feel like you’re part of the family.

Helen Grey, M.D.: This program is so supportive. Kind of already touched on how during my first two weeks I had awesome upper level residents who were always there for any questions or any like concerns that I had about my patients.

Michael Simhachalam, M.D.: Supportive for sure. After that, I would probably say challenging ’cause we do work hard. But after that, I’d also say it’s a whole lot of fun.

Davis Reed, M.D.: Another word I would use would be respect. I feel like family medicine is incredibly well respected here at the hospital and being an unopposed program, you really are treated like a physician and you get to practice full-spectrum family medicine.

Meg O’Sell, M.D.: And then another word would just be kind. I think that’s a theme of all of the people who are associated with this program and part of this program.

Angelique Mole, M.D.: I love coming to work — not just… some days are hard, for sure, but the people I work with — it can make such a difference when you’re going to work and not enjoying the people that you’re around. So I really like that aspect of things. I feel like they’ve become a part of the family, where I can go hang out at their house, work out at their house, and do these things, and still come and work alongside them too.

Davis Reed, M.D.: The third word I’d use to describe the program really is excellence. It’s part of our slogan, but it is true. The training here is just top-notch. I mean, you get great training in the inpatient setting as well as the outpatient setting. All the attendings are truly brilliant in their medical knowledge, but they also really care about the patients, and so that was one of the big things that drew me here as well.

Rob Tiller, M.D., Program Director: People ask me, what is the strength of our program? The strength of our program is the people. We were able to recruit academically excellent resident physicians who are very excited about what they can do with family medicine to serve communities; great faculty who are excited to teach, who are here solely to teach medical students and residents. They want to train them to achieve our mission: to be able to go out and practice full-scope family medicine wherever they go. Wonderful staff, great residency coordinator. Strength is our people.