Olive View-UCLA Medical Center

14445 Olive View Drive, Sylmar, California 91342

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, which 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. Four 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. Additionally, 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, Orthopedics, Plastics, Urology, Ophthalmology, 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.

Olive View is the referral center for the ValleyCare system of County-operated clinics. These community-based clinics serve residents of the San Fernando, Santa Clarita, and Antelope Valleys in north Los Angeles County. Additionally, the ValleyCare clinics are also training sites staffed with full-time UCLA faculty for several housestaff continuity panels.

Olive View-UCLA Medical Center offers a great learning atmosphere with outstanding teaching faculty who are very approachable; their philosophy is that patient care should be excellent while learning should be enjoyable. Our nurses are amazing; they are patient, effective, and cooperative, and enjoy working with our housestaff to provide superior care for all patients. Additionally,our support staff is highly trained, responsible, and friendly. We have excellent ancillary services: for example, routine phlebotomy is scheduled every 4 hours and available STAT 24 hours a day. Above all, Olive View has a very appreciative patient population. Our recent patient satisfaction survey reveals that nearly all of our patients are very satisfied with the quality of care they receive at Olive View. One of our interns said it best when asked why she chose us: “I felt that at Olive View I would work hard and be cared about”. We have said this before, but will say it again: residency training is hard work at any first-rate institution. However, very few programs welcome you into their family the way Olive View-UCLA does, which emphasizes a humane balanced program centered around the resident.