About Us

The Sutter Santa Rosa Regional Hospital (SSRRH) Family Medicine Residency Program is grounded in two principles:

1. One-on-one guidance helps each resident realize their full potential.
2. A varied, experienced faculty is key to supporting every resident’s goals.

Through interdisciplinary training, you'll learn how to navigate the full spectrum of family medicine. Here, you won’t just care for patients — you'll help reshape what care should look like. Every resident plays a vital role in expanding access, improving outcomes, and strengthening communities. We’re united by a shared purpose to keep learning, growing, and driving family medicine forward.

What We Stand For

Mission

Guided by inclusion and empathy, and grounded in relationships and community, we train full-spectrum family physicians to deliver exceptional care to systemically disadvantaged patients and to advocate for social justice.

Vision

Faculty and graduates are physician leaders from inclusive backgrounds who work together to create just systems that help all patients achieve their fullest potential, promote healthy communities, and foster joy and sustainability in practice.

Philosophy

Through advanced biomedical training and a deep respect for cultural context, residents learn to treat the whole person. We focus on the emotional, social, and systemic realities that impact every patient’s well-being.

Program Aims

• Train excellent family medicine doctors to provide full-spectrum ambulatory care in semirural Northern California.
• Advance comprehensive clinical training with emphasis on reproductive health, addiction care, and integrative medicine for the underserved.
• Enhance the recruitment and retention of residents who represent a wide array of patients and who foster leadership skills in community engagement, advocacy, justice, inclusion, and belonging.
• Innovate and integrate cutting-edge educational practices in a culture of continuous learning and wellness.

Training Career-Ready Physicians

Residency is more than training. It’s a transformation. That’s why we seek residents committed to championing underserved communities and deepening their skills in cultural mindfulness. Through Balint groups, faculty members and residents reflect on the doctor-patient relationship and its emotional dimensions. This reflective practice strengthens our commitment to biopsychosocial care in daily practice.

Skills Residents Master by Graduation

• Common inpatient and outpatient medical conditions
• Emergency care
• Full range of office procedures
• Minor surgical skills
• Obstetrics
• Office counseling

Our Faculty’s Special Interests

• Care of older patients
• Community engagement
• Cultural humility
• Global health
• Health policy
• Integrative medicine
• Preventative medicine
• Surgical obstetrics
• Reproductive health
• Addiction Medicine
• Point-of-Care Ultrasound (POCUS)

Inclusion and Belonging and Anti-Racism

We’re committed to inclusion, social justice, and listening to our residents. To support that work, we invited Dr. Sharon G.E. Washington, an anti-bias consultant, to assess our program. Together, we established the PEACE (Process of Engaging in Action to Create Inclusion) framework. This approach embeds anti-bias principles into five key stages of residency: entering, experiencing, education, enrichment, and exiting.
Our ongoing efforts involve:

• Creating safe space agreements
• Implementing racial caucusing
• Increasing faculty racial literacy
• Partnering with the community to meet patient needs
• Revising evaluations to reduce bias

We’re committed to strengthening faculty diversity and partnering with our residents to create an environment where everyone can thrive. 

Where We Work

Our residents show up where care is needed most, from exam rooms to community centers.

Inpatient Training

• Sutter Santa Rosa Regional Hospital
• UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital Oakland

Outpatient Training:

• Santa Rosa Community Health (Vista, Lombardi, Brookwood, Elise Allen, and Roseland campuses)
• Sutter Health (Airway, Stony Point, and Mark West sites)
• Planned Parenthood
• Hospice of Petaluma
• Redwood Family Dermatology
• Russian River Health Center
• Sam Jones Hall (Homeless Shelter)
• Center Point Drug Abuse Alternatives Center
• Bayer Farms