Making The Rounds 2025

KERN MEDICAL YEAR IN REVIEW

Amir Berjis, MD, MACM, FACS, FCCP Director of Medical Education

For over 68 years, Kern Medical has served a dual purpose as the county’s sole public safety net hospital, tasked with providing care to the most vulnerable and susceptible patient population, and as the premiere academic teaching hospital in the southern Central Valley. Our Internal Medicine Residency Program was founded in 1957 and is the oldest training program in the region. Our General Surgery Residency Program, originally established that same year, is poised to return with newly matched residents this July 2025. Once again, Kern Medical is leading the way in both graduate (GME) and undergraduate medical education across Kern County. Over the last two years, Kern Medical has received accreditation for three new programs from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME). These include the aforementioned General Surgery Residency, Addiction Medicine Fellowship, and Transitional Year Residency. We now sponsor ten ACGME-accredited residency and fellowship programs, in addition to an accredited Pharmacy Residency and Simulation Fellowship. We are currently applying for a new Family

Medicine Residency Program slated to start in 2027 and planning on additional medicine subspecialty fellowships later in this decade. These GME programs are designed to fill in the gaps for both primary and subspecialty care, so vital for our underserved population. Kern Medical represents the most successful recruiter of future physicians into our region. Nearly 6,000 unique applicants applied to our residency and fellowship programs this past year; including over 670 applicants for our newly accredited General Surgery program alone! Nearly 600 separate interviews were conducted by our programs for a total of 42 positions spanning all first-year residents’ slots.