planning and development and for sessions on administration and evaluation of
clerkships in their regional clinical site.
In the Florida State model, 70% of clerkship experiences are in ambulatory
settings, including the many nonhospital settings in which health care is currently
delivered. Operating costs for this clinical training model reside in the
reimbursement of clerkship faculty for training of students and for the operation
of the community campus office. Another critical component of this clinical
training model is clinical skills preparation for medical students. Because 70% of
the medical students’ training occurs in ambulatory settings, students must have
excellent clinical skills before they arrive at their regional campus. To a much
greater extent than is true for students training in an academic health center,
FSU College of Medicine students must be able to easily integrate into physicians’
practices, outpatient clinics, and other clerkship sites. Extensive clinical
skills training is an important part of the curriculum in the first and second years
of medical school.
The 21st-century capabilities for transfer of audio, video, and digital information
of all kinds greatly facilitate the operation of this training model. Library
holdings, curricular and other college information are immediately available to
each student and faculty member, wherever they are. Lectures, committee meetings,
conferences, workshops, and seminars are available by video-conferencing
across all campuses. All student contacts with patients at all sites are entered into
a clinical data collection system for short and long-term educational and research
applications. All students are required to have laptops and PDAs and are trained
to use the power of information technology in their daily studies and patient
interactions. This will hopefully foster lifelong habits in their medical practices.
PATIENT-CENTERED CLINICAL TRAINING
The law directed the new college of medicine to focus on training compassionate
physicians to practice patient-centered health care. The college was
directed to train its students to focus on patients rather than diseases—to treat
the patient, not just the disease. To accomplish this goal, the biopsychosocial
model of patient care is integrated into the entire medical curriculum. Case
studies throughout years 1 through 3 contain behavioral components, and there
are free-standing course modules on psychosocial factors, health and disease,
cross-cultural factors in health care, and ethics to reinforce the biopsychosocial
model of patient care.
The clinical skills continuum throughout years 1 and 2 utilizes a state-of-theart
clinical learning center, which has a fulltime professional staff and features
14 patient rooms for training. The center utilizes the most current digital technology
to facilitate simultaneous and digitally recorded evaluation. Faculty and
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