Family and Community Medicine provides educational services for students at our school and partnering institutions. Our faculty contributes to medical student education through classroom teaching, early clinical experiences, medical simulations, service teaching and mentoring. Our clinical clerkship allows students to experience a sample of family and community medicine.
Goals for the clerkship:
- Learn about common patient-care issues encountered by family physicians
- Understand the family physician's role in directing and coordinating care for patients, their families and the medical community
- Observe and understand the disparities in healthcare outcomes caused by the patient's health literacy
- Attempt to correct the health disparities in our community through service-learning experiences by providing culturally and contextually appropriate care and by applying lessons learned in patient-centered communications, health literacy assessments
- Motivate patients toward better self-care and adherence to a medical plan
- Understand how evidence-based medicine, team-based interdisciplinary care, information technology and medical systems analysis can improve healthcare while decreasing waste and errors
Experiences come from a variety of sources, including Family Medicine faculty, community physicians, residents, inpatient and outpatient services and didactics.
Medical students work closely with faculty, community physicians and residents in both inpatient and outpatient services. Lectures and conferences complement the clinical experiences each resident gains.
Following basic clinical experiences, we offer complementary and additive electives in Family Medicine that include electives in the hospital, ambulatory and rural settings, as well as electives in quality improvement.