Family Medicine

Welcome from the Chiefs

Welcome to the Trinity Health Grand Rapids Family Medicine Residency Program (GRFMR)!

We are so excited that you have landed here in your search for a residency program and hope this helps you learn a little bit more about our residency family and if this is the right place for you! 

Our program was established in 1973 (50 years of training awesome FM docs) and is a highly-respected program in the Grand Rapids community. Many graduates over the years have continued to work closely with the program in some capacity – whether that be precepting in the clinic, hosting residents in their own offices, or rounding on our FM inpatient service.

Our Program

Here at Trinity Health GRFMR, we provide full-scope Family Medicine training that will truly prepare you for whatever direction you choose to go in your FM career. We have a robust, busy inpatient service that is run solely by our family medicine residents and faculty that really helps to build an excellent foundation of medicine, predominantly in your first and second years.

Our clinic, which is conveniently connected to the hospital, hosts a large, diverse patient panel with patients who have been coming to our clinic for most of their lives! While the majority of your time in residency will be spent at our home institution (Trinity Health Grand Rapids – Saint Mary’s), we also rotate through some incredible hospitals in the community, including Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital, Spectrum – Butterworth, and outpatient rotations through Pine Rest Psychiatric Facilities to help strengthen our experiences in Pediatrics, Obstetrics, and Psychiatry.

A Close Community of Residents

The best part of our program far and away is the people. When we call it a residency family, we really mean it. Our faculty is supportive, encouraging, and always looking for ways to help us obtain the best education possible. Not only do they care about the doctors that we are becoming, but also the people that we are outside of work. From engagements and weddings to babies or new pets, they are there to support all the big life events!

Co-residents become family from day one – interns get weekly afternoons off during block one for bonding with their class. As residency progresses, getting to be on rotations with your class/fellow residents feels like home. We enjoy spending time together outside of work, whether for residency-hosted events, random ice cream meet-ups or board game nights! (Check out our Instagram @thgr_fmres to see all the fun and shenanigans we get into!)

As a residency, we collectively place an emphasis on mental health with wellness walks, July intern bonding days, soccer & basketball nights, and monthly Book Club. We work hard, learn lots and support each other through it all.

We'd love to hear from you!

We hope this website provides insight not only into our curriculum but also the educational and supportive environment we foster. If you have questions or just want to chat – feel free to reach out. We would be more than happy to talk with you! Good luck in your residency search.

Family Medicine Recruitment Chairs,

Jesse Schwartz, MD & Laura Thompson, MD

In 2010, the ACGME created a Coordinator Excellence award to honor and recognize the very crucial role that program coordinators play in the success of a residency program. Our program senior administrator, Alicia Crispin, was the 2015 recipient of this award.