Combined Residency Training ProgramFamily Medicine and Psychiatry

The combined Family Medicine and Psychiatry Residency Training Program at UC Davis is one of the oldest combined family medicine and psychiatry residency training programs in the nation. Starting in 1995, the UC Davis Family Medicine and Psychiatry Residency Training Program seeks to train physicians who will practice both family medicine and psychiatry. Our goal is to improve the physical and mental health of our community, both globally and locally, by providing residents with diverse and foundational family medicine and psychiatry opportunities to learn and grow as clinicians. We hope to prepare and inspire our residents to make a difference in the world through research, education, advocacy, and clinical practice. The curriculum of the five-year program follows guidelines published jointly by the American Board of Family Practice and the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology but also includes unique curriculum that integrates the two fields.

The objective of our combined training in family medicine and psychiatry is to produce physicians with broad-based training in both specialties and also to accommodate our individual residents’ specific interests within these two fields. As such, residents focus on outpatient community-based care of acute and chronic primary care and psychiatric illnesses from postpartum depression and attention deficit disorder to diabetes mellitus and congestive heart failure. They also become comfortable with inpatient medical care, inpatient psychiatric care, and emergency care in both fields. At the conclusion of training, graduates are eligible to sit for the board examinations of family medicine as well as psychiatry. Graduates of combined training may be expected to develop practices which take advantage of the joint-training experience, serve as consultants in liaison psychiatry or family practice, develop a career in international medicine or rural medicine, practice addiction medicine or be actively involved in research or administration in family medicine and/or psychiatry.

The combined program is a 60-month (five-year) experience coordinated jointly by the Departments of Family and Community Medicine and Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. Both are fully accredited residency programs. The combined program has been endorsed by the institutional Graduate Medical Education Committee and the Boards of Family Medicine and Psychiatry and Neurology. Rachel Robitz, M.D. is the training director in coordination with Belinda Bandstra, M.D. in Psychiatry and Sarah Marshall, M.D., in the Family and Community Medicine.

If you are interested in an elective rotation to explore a possible career in integrated Family Medicine and Psychiatry we offer a four-week elective rotation (Psych 419) for fourth year medical students through VSAS opening in mid-April. If you are interested in learning more about our program, please feel free to contact us for details.

Application process

Welcome to the UC Davis Family Medicine and Psychiatry (FMP) combined residency program website!  We hope that the information here will help provide you an overview of our program. UC Davis has one of the oldest FMP programs in the country!  We are also one of two institutions in the country with both an FMP program and an internal medicine/psychiatry program.  Because of this, there is a strong history and culture of combined training here.  Preparing residents to be physicians competent in the integration of both specialties is our greatest priority.  We also want to create leaders at the interface of family medicine and psychiatry who are able to improve the health of their communities. 

I discovered combined training when I was a second-year medical student at the University of Cincinnati.  I completed FMP residency at UC San Diego, and I have been here at UC Davis since 2017. I was the associate training director of the FMP program until January of 2020 when I became the co-director. I returned from maternity leave in September of 2020 following the birth of my first child, and I am currently the training director of the program. I currently work as the Medical Director of Sacramento County Mental Health Urgent Care Clinic and in the Sacramento County Health Center, where I provide primary and psychiatric care to a diverse patient population. I find that my combined training is particularly valuable in my work studying, advocating for, and educating healthcare providers about human trafficking. As a dual-boarded physician I feel that I am better able to address the complex needs of this population from both a clinical perspective and a systems perspective.

Improving the health of our communities is important to all of our residents. Our residents have done stellar projects to improve the care of populations who have experienced homelessness, improve the health of people who use drugs using harm reduction approaches, improve the wellbeing of their fellow residents, and provide comprehensive care to victims of crime. I am continually amazed by our residents and feel honored to get the opportunity to work alongside them. As you explore our program, I encourage you to chat with our current family medicine/psychiatry residents and learn about their passions. 

I was drawn to UC Davis because of its commitment to community health and to education. Because we are in the capitol of California, we have a unique opportunity to engage in advocacy efforts. Our psychiatry program is world-renowned for its work in cultural psychiatry. We have some excellent clinical and systems researchers in our Family and Community Medicine program, and  all of our residents spend time longitudinally at one of several federally qualified health centers here in Sacramento. Our program provides a good mix of community health and academics. 

Please enjoy browsing our website. Also, do not hesitate to reach out to me if you have any questions about our program.

Thank you,