LEWISTON — Central Maine Medical Center’s Family Medicine Residency recently served as part of the host committee for the 2011 Family Medicine Education Consortium’s annual conference in Danvers, Mass.

Central Maine Medical Center, Rumford Hospital and the CMMC FMR faculty and alumni were financial supporters of scholarships awarded to medical students who attended the conference.

FMR program director Donald Woolever, M.D., and associate program director Deborah Taylor, Ph.D., joined representatives from other family medicine residencies and medical school family medicine departments in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts and Rhode Island to sponsor the conference. The three-day educational event was designed for medical students interested in primary care, residents in family medicine residency programs, directors and faculty of these programs and family physicians who serve as teachers.

Peter Elias, M.D., a family physician at Family Health Care Associates in Auburn, was one of three recipients of the Family Medicine Education Consortium’s “This We Believe” awards. The “This We Believe” project, modeled on National Public Radio’s “This I Believe” radio program, offers physicians, physicians-in-training and medical students engaged in family medicine organizations, the opportunity to express their core beliefs about serving others.

Elias was asked to read his essay, “The Reason,” to the entire conference group to start the last day of the conference.

CMMC residency faculty and residents participated in various seminars and workshops, including an orthopedics skills/casting workshop for medical students led by participants from CMMC.

As part of a “residency fair team,” attendees from CMMC were asked to dress in a “family or team theme” costume. CMMC’s representatives dressed as a biking team for the Dempsey Challenge, an annual fundraiser organized by the Patrick Dempsey Center for Cancer Hope and Healing at CMMC.

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