Skip to main content

Piedmont Family Practice Named 2016 South Carolina AHEC Practice of the Year

The Practice of the Year Award recognizes practices and training sites that exhibit exemplary dedication to the teaching of health professions students and a commitment to serving their communities.  The South Carolina AHEC recognizes Piedmont Family Practice as the South Carolina AHEC 2016 Practice of the Year.

Piedmont Family Practice, with locations in Anderson and Greenville counties, is a National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) recognized Level III Patient Centered Medical Home. The practice provides quality comprehensive care with exceptional service to their patients.  All of the providers are recognized by the NCQA for providing excellent care for both diabetes and heart disease/stroke prevention.  In addition to being board certified in family medicine, several of the physicians are also certified in geriatrics, allowing them to better serve a diverse community.

Piedmont Family Practice serves as a superb example to students of rural medical care, inter-professional teamwork and community commitment.   The practitioners have served as preceptors to students for MUSC and South Carolina AHEC for many years.  Always willing to accept students, the practice provides preceptors for a number of disciplines including medicine, nursing, and physician assisting.  During the past year, they have precepted 14 students from MUSC.

Students often comment on the outstanding clinical experience and the welcoming, pleasant atmosphere at Piedmont Family Practice.  The positive and non-intimidating environment allows students to have a greater, richer clinical experience.  They receive one-on-one teaching from their preceptors, and everyone at the practice is eager and excited to host healthcare students.  Though students are often reluctant to complete a rural clinical rotation, they leave Piedmont Family Practice with a wealth of knowledge and experiences, both clinical and personal.

Upstate AHEC Health Professions Student Program coordinators emphasize that working with the physicians, mid-level providers, nurses and support staff at Piedmont Family Practice is an absolutely wonderful experience.  They do not say “no” to a placement request from AHEC. Piedmont Family Practice is always more than willing to take a student (or two) and are flexible with the placement request needs.  They have even been able to fulfill last minute placement requests without any hesitation. Their willingness is serve students is one of many examples of how Piedmont Family Practice has committed itself to student education.

The providers and staff at Piedmont Family Practice go above and beyond in supporting the education of health professions students. They have made a commitment to student education and are doing an outstanding job of providing exceptional rural clinical experiences to our students.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Lowcountry AHEC Helps School Nurse Orientation Pivot Online during Pandemic

For many years, orientation for school nurses in South Carolina has been an in-person event; however, due to COVID-19, this orientation, like so many other in-person events, was cancelled this past year. Yet the need to orient South Carolina's school nurses remains critical. Recognizing this need, a team consisting of Lowcountry AHEC staff, South Carolina Association of School Nurse President Dawn MacAdams and South Carolina Department of Education State School Nurse Consultant Vicky Ladd developed a plan to deliver the orientation as an online, self-paced course. The instructors supported the format change, working to convert their in-person sessions to online content, and Lowcountry AHEC will provide nursing credit for the series over the next two years. The orientation went live in the fall of 2020 and is available at no cost to South Carolina school nurses on the new and improved South Carolina AHEC Learning Portal. To find out more and register, visit the Foundations of School

SC AHEC Excellence Awards: Gateway Award

The South Carolina AHEC Gateway Award recognizes individuals who are committed to furthering the development of future health professionals and are distinguished in their service to students in the health careers pipeline. This year’s Gateway Award recipient is Angelica Ellman Christie, Ed.D.  Dr. Christie is currently the vice president of academic affairs at Denmark Technical College. Previously, she served in the South Carolina AHEC system for numerous years: She started her career in 1998 as the Health Careers Program (HCP) coordinator for Greenville AHEC and advanced as the HCP director in the South Carolina AHEC program office in 2000. In the fall of 2018, Dr. Christie left South Carolina AHEC for her position at Denmark Tech. Throughout her career, Dr. Christie exhibited her passionate dedication to advancing the mission of South Carolina AHEC. She enthusiastically went above and beyond to research, develop, and successfully undertake new projects and programming to streng

South Carolina AHEC Welcomes Katie Gaul as New Office for Healthcare Workforce Director and Recognizes Linda Lacey's 10 Years of Service to the State

Katie Gaul The South Carolina AHEC Program welcomes Katie Gaul as the new director of the South   Carolina Office for Healthcare Workforce and bids a fond farewell to Linda Lacey, who will be retiring at the end of the year.  Linda joined South Carolina AHEC in 2009 as the founding director of the South Carolina Office for Healthcare Workforce (SCOHW), which received startup funding from The Duke Endowment. SCOHW works closely with other state agencies and health-related organizations to ensure they have the information they need about the healthcare workforce in South Carolina and the issues affecting the future of that workforce. During her tenure, Linda established the South Carolina Health Professions Data Book – a widely used resource that describes the available healthcare workforce, population, health status and social/economic conditions in each county in the state. Updated every two years, the data book was recognized as a ‘best state document’ in 2013 by the South