Every day in the office is different for Antonio Garcia, MD, a family medicine physician in Riverside and an alumnus of UC Riverside School of Medicine. “One day, you’re treating a teenager, the next thing you know, you’re removing a skin tag or doing an abscess drainage, and next you’re talking about diabetes,” he said. “People think family medicine is boring, but it's a lot of fun because you get to see a wide variety of things.”

Garcia graduated from medical school in 2020 then completed his family medicine residency in 2023, also at the UCR SOM. He immediately put his goal of caring for his community into practice at Kaiser Permanente Meridian Medical Offices in Riverside. Garcia recalled falling in love with the clinic while rotating there as a medical student. “I liked the way that they took care of their patients, I loved the patient population–there were a lot of Latinos there–and I was like, ‘I could definitely fit in here,’” he said.

By practicing in the Inland Empire, Garcia is also fulfilling the SOM’s mission of training a diverse workforce of physicians to serve the local area. Garcia said he’s observed the importance of the SOM’s mission through his practice. “As a Latino doctor, you see that patients are very happy to see you, they're very grateful to see you,” he said.

And in line with research suggesting that patients’ and providers’ racial backgrounds can affect trust, communication, and patient outcomes, Garcia added, “Patients trust you more, and so they're more likely to listen to you and take better care of themselves.”

Garcia has also had patients come to him because of their shared background. “I get a lot of patients who are Spanish speaking, Latinos,” he said. “A lot of them, once they find me, they switch over or they bring their parents to me because they feel like I do a good job and they feel comfortable with me.”

Through family medicine, an underrepresented specialty that the SOM is also working to build, Garcia develops relationships with his patients and works with them to improve their health over time. “I've had so many patients who smoke and I keep telling them, ‘Every time I see you, we're going to talk about quitting smoking,’ and then one day they’re finally ready,” he said. “You help them change their ways, and then you feel very happy because you see their improvement,” Garcia added. “Family medicine is the best, because you get the opportunity to stop problems before they develop.”

“I think it's really fantastic that Antonio went into family medicine, because that's probably the specialty that has the biggest impact in relieving physician shortages in the Inland Empire,” said Kenneth Ballou, MD, the clerkship director of Family Medicine at the SOM. “He also chose to practice in Riverside, which is very, very important, and then on top of that, he's now paying it forward by…teaching our school's students now in his practice,” Ballou continued. “He's come full circle; he's truly the embodiment of our mission.”

Understanding the community

While Garcia only recently became a fully certified attending physician, he said his training at the UCR SOM prepared him to work with patients in the community. Because the SOM is a community-based school without its own hospital, medical students and residents train in clinics throughout the area, an aspect Garcia viewed as an advantage.

“Going to UCR was very beneficial because you get to work in different areas of the Inland Empire, so you learn a little bit about different populations,” he said. “Then when you're actually in your own practice, you’re able to put together everything that you learned, and I feel like it shows in your patient care.”

Rotating through different clinics also exposed Garcia to a variety of techniques. “If you were just at one place, then you only know those doctors and the things they do and that specific population,” he said. “But if you go other places, you learn that things are done differently…and then you're able to develop your own practice where you saw all these doctors, you learn what you like from them, what you didn't like from them, and then you try to incorporate all of that into your practice,” he continued. “I feel like you get a really good education learning from different doctors, who also come from different backgrounds, so you learn a little bit from everyone.”

Now, Garcia said some patients request him because of his UCR training. “A lot of my patients have chosen me because they saw that I went to UCR, they remember when the School of Medicine first opened 10 years ago and they're very impressed with UCR,” he said. “So it’s always a little bit of pressure, I have to live up to the expectations, but I’m trying to do the best job I can and continue to give UCR a good name.”

Encouraging students to enter family medicine

Garcia is now helping train SOM students at the clinic where he himself rotated as a medical student, with the goal of inspiring upcoming doctors. “I really enjoyed my rotation there, so I try to bring it back full circle,” he said. “You give them a preview of your life, and hopefully they have a good experience, and then you never know, maybe they'll come back like I did.”

As soon as Garcia started his job, he checked to make sure the clinic was still involved in the SOM’s Longitudinal Ambulatory Care Experience (LACE) program so he could participate as a preceptor, or physician instructor. He recalled having a good experience with his LACE preceptor at a clinic in San Bernardino, and hopes to offer similar benefits to current SOM students. “I wanted to do LACE to help show them the life of a family medicine physician, and show them how much fun it is, and try to inspire them to go into family medicine because we need more family medicine doctors,” Garcia said.

Just as he loves family medicine because it gives him opportunities to keep learning, Garcia said he enjoys mentoring and learning from medical students. “I love working with medical students because they always ask really hard questions and they keep you on your toes,” he said. “Whenever I have a medical student, I'm always studying, trying to know everything, so I’m ready if they ask me something,” Garcia went on. He added with a laugh, “I'm like, ‘I definitely didn't read that yesterday.’”

But, Garcia said, his primary goal is to help the students receive the training they need. “You want to give them the correct information, you want to make sure that they've learned the correct things from you, and so you always want to make sure that you're perfect,” he said. “That’s what I love about working with medical students, they keep you on top of your game and they make you become a better version of yourself.”

Garcia actively encourages the students he works with to pursue family medicine. “I try to show them how cool it is to be a family medicine doctor…every single patient has a different problem, so it's very stimulating, and it’s number one in my opinion,” he said. “My LACE student wanted to go into dermatology, but I tried to convince her to go into family medicine,” he continued with a smile.

“I hope more students do go into family medicine though, because we need more doctors in this area,” he added, listing benefits that included helping all types of patients, learning new things through working with specialists, and watching patients improve their health over time. “It’s just amazing to be a family medicine physician, and if I could do it all over again, I would choose family medicine every single time.”

Garcia said that it’s particularly important to increase the number of physicians in the local area for patients. “I hope that people who grow up here in the Inland Empire come to UCR, because if you grow up here, you know your patient population, you know your patients, you know the area,” he said. He added that many people of his classmates also now work for Kaiser in different specialties, sometimes allowing them to collaborate and pool their knowledge to improve patient care. “That's our ultimate goal, is to help better take care of our patients and also improve the health of our community,” he said.