Watauga Medical Center is a 117‑bed regional hospital in Boone, North Carolina, serving as the exclusive home for the family medicine residency program. Because no other residency programs are based here, our residents train in a fully unopposed setting, with exceptional access to:

  • Inpatient care — managing adult medicine cases on wards

  • Obstetrics — including labor, delivery, and postpartum care

  • Newborn and pediatric care — serving infants and children

  • Emergency department — handling acute care across age groups

  • Specialty rotations — exposure to various specialty clinics supporting primary care

This setup gives residents a broad, well-rounded educational experience, with close faculty engagement and continuity of care from inpatient to outpatient settings.

Watauga Medical Center- UNC Health Appalachian

You will travel to Asheville, North Carolina for a 4 week rotation during your intern year for inpatient pediatric rotation and during third year for Pediatric Emergency Medicine. Here you will learn the essential pediatric skills to be able to feel comfortable taking care of hospitalized pediatric patients. While in Asheville, housing is provided for each resident.

Mission Hospital

Charles A. Cannon, Jr. Memorial Hospital – Critical Access Training Site

Charles A. Cannon, Jr. Memorial Hospital is a 25‑bed critical access hospital situated in Linville, North Carolina, featuring a 10‑bed inpatient behavioral health unit. As a key part of the family medicine residency program, this site provides a rural, high-acuity training environment, complementing rotations at Watauga Medical Center.

What makes Cannon Memorial unique:

    •    Critical access setting: Residents experience healthcare delivery in a small, resource-limited critical access hospital.

    •    High-acuity care: Frequent exposure to urgent and complex cases.

    •    Close attending supervision: Residents work side‑by‑side with attending physicians in a more intimate clinical setting.

    •    Rural population exposure: Develop skills in serving a rural, underserved community.

Residents rotating through Cannon gain invaluable experience in managing complex cases under constrained resources—preparing them for practice in rural and community-based medicine.