Course Director: Barbara B. Tobias, M.D.

Medical Student Coordinator: Sherry Weathers

The Family Medicine third-year clerkship is a required 4 week rotation. Students are placed in a community or residency site and become an integral part of the health care team. The clerkship emphasizes strengthening competencies in history taking, physical examination skills, problem differentiation, disease prevention and management, written and oral presentations. In applying these basic skills the student will develop an understanding of the importance of the concept of a medical home in patient care: comprehensive, patient centered, longitudinal primary care. Working one-on-one with family physicians students will integrate knowledge of the basic sciences with the biopsychosocial factors that critically impact a patient’s experience of illness and health in the care of the patient.

Clinical: Students spend the majority of the rotation in direct ambulatory patient care as a member of the healthcare team in preceptors’ offices in the Tri-State area. Students are placed in diverse community sites ranging from solo practices to small group practices to faculty and residency programs. The sites may be urban, suburban or rural. Students are encouraged to take advantage of all learning opportunities during the month with their preceptor; for example, participate in hospital rounds, visit nursing home patients, accompany their preceptor on home visits and become familiar with the business side of running a medical practice.

Didactics: Students spend one day a week in the Department of Family Medicine at the College of Medicine in formal teaching sessions. The didactics are interactive, adult-learning sessions with an emphasis on common outpatient problems, communication and clinical skills, and the thought process involved in evaluating patients.

Students receive midway formative feedback from their preceptors and review this individually with Family Medicine faculty. The final grade for the Family Medicine clerkship is a combination of three components: the preceptor evaluation (60%); the end-of-rotation exam (20%); and an in-depth family study paper (20%).

For more information about the Surgery Student Education please contact:

Sherry Weathers
Program Coordinator
weathes@fammed.uc.edu
558-1435

or Barbara B. Tobias, M.D.
Family Medicine Clerkship Director
Barbara.Tobias@uc.edu

To view the Family Medicine predoctoral site, go to http://www.familymedicine.uc.edu.