The University of Kentucky's Accelerated Family Practice Residency Program

The University of Kentucky's Department of Family Medicine and the American Board of Family Practice experimented during 1989 and 1990 with the implementation of an accelerated family practice residency program. This pilot program, called the Accelerated Residency Program (ARP), allowed three fourth-year medical students to serve as first-year residents in family practice while simultaneously fulfilling their fourth-year medical school requirements. This allowed the students to complete medical school and residency training in six years instead of seven. Advantages of the program included maintaining clinical skills that might otherwise have been lost during the elective fourth year of medical school, stimulating interest in active learning, earlier entry into a wage-earning position, and an ultimate decrease in the length of the educational process. Disadvantages of the program included having to make important clinical decisions with less training, loss of elective and other training opportunities during the fourth year of medical school, the need for students to make an earlier career/specialty choice, and the possibility that other physicians might perceive graduates of the program as being less well trained.