Olive View - UCLA Medical Center
Olive View - UCLA Medical Center, our program "home," is a county hospital located in the north end of the San Fernando Valley, about 30 minutes away from UCLA. The facility is a 377-bed hospital built in May 1987, the newest acute care medical center operated by the County of Los Angeles. It serves the needs of low income and indigent patients as well as the surrounding middle class community. It is a beautiful campus that provides an enjoyable working environment. As is true with most county facilities, many patients present with acute, untreated illnesses. Housestaff are exposed to common medical illnesses as well as a wide variety of unusual and rare diseases.
Olive View has eight internal medicine ward services (100 beds), with two teams on call every fourth night. A maximum of five new patients may be admitted to an intern on call. Each ward service normally has one resident, two interns, and one medical student. Three teams staff the 18-bed ICU at Olive View; each team is comprised of one intern and one resident. In addition to the inpatient medical services, Olive View has a very busy outpatient department, including the emergency room, urgent care and a full complement of continuity and subspecialty clinics. nursesAdditionally, housestaff provide consultation for patients on the surgical, obstetric/gynecologic, and psychiatric services. Subspecialty fellows and a full-time clinically oriented faculty provide consultations, procedure services, and supervision. Olive View-UCLA Medical Center is one of the main training sites for other UCLA residency programs, including General Surgery, ENT, Plastics, Urology, Ophthalmology, Orthopedics, Anesthesiology, Pediatrics, OB-Gyn, Neurology, Emergency Medicine, and Family Medicine.
Olive View has a unique patient population with wide-ranging pathology. This population is younger than most, with an average age between 40 and 50. Approximately 50% of patients are Hispanic; the other 50% are caucasions, Asians, African-Americans and many other diverse ethnicities. The dynamics of the training environment translate into a rich internal medicine experience in both the inpatient and outpatient settings. Such favorable circumstances have made Olive View one of the most popular rotations not only for the residents of other training programs in Los Angeles, but also for students at UCLA and nationally.