Obstetrics

Obstetrical care is a core component of practice of a full spectrum family physician, which is why it is such an important part of our curriculum here at Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center Family Medicine Center and Residency. The residency is one of three delivering services at Eastern Maine Medical Center. We deliver all our own clinic patients, patients referred from Wellspring (a residential substance abuse treatment center) and referred patients from Health Access Network (a Federally Qualified Health Center in Lincoln) as well as the Mabel Wadsworth Clinic. We are lucky to have strong working relationships with the two other delivering services on the floor, allowing you as a resident to participate in the care of their patients as well. We share with them precipitous deliveries, transfer OB patients from the several critical access and smaller hospitals in the region, and patients who present without prenatal care. We are in a fortuitous position as family physicians to manage medical complications of pregnancy and are often consulted by our OB/GYN colleagues to comanage for this reason. Our OB faculty includes three OB fellowship trained family medicine faculty who are fully credentialled in the hospital to perform surgical obstetrics as well as four other FM-OB Faculty.

Our patient population is disproportionately high risk; as such we work with the state’s maternal fetal medicine team based out of Portland to help guide care.

Residents at a minimum are required to deliver a continuity patient and 20 vaginal deliveries by the end of their residency. While for some this is enough, many residents are keenly enthusiastic about obstetrics, and will opt for more volume through the Health Access Network referrals and seizing upon opportunities with Obstetricians when they have actively laboring patients on labor and delivery. Residents seeking opportunity will graduate training with more than 80-100 vaginal deliveries and extensive time in the OR.

For those residents seeking further OB training and exposure to practice in other settings, our program has established relationships with higher volume centers for away rotations.