components of clinical skills. One component is going to be the service-learning activities, which includes EMT ride alongs, Clinical Health Worker, and patient navigator. Students will be exposed to authentic clinical experiences in service learning. The second component of that first year, is our clinical skills didactics. These small group sessions will be hands-on sessions with standardized patients, allowing students the opportunity to practice and hone in on their history taking and physical exam skills.
How many class meetings for each section of your pre clerkship? Students will meet twice a month, 4-4½ hours each session for the service-learning component, and twice a month for didactics. They are meeting every week, whether that’ s going to be for didactics or a servicelearning session.
Are there no prerequisites? Are students required to come in with any particular set of knowledge? One of the key things during their one-month orientation, to be called Gateway, is that students will start receiving clinical skills training at that point. Students I know will come in with volunteer experience, having worked with patients in the clinical setting, and some may have already had experiences as scribes in the clinic. It’ s not a requirement that they have any of these skills, as we will provide them with training.
Please describe the details of the curriculum and how the instruction will be staged. The aim of this course, as with most clinical skillsbased courses, is for it to be hands on. We definitely want students to be able to practice their clinical skills in a safe space. They’ re going to get regular feedback from faculty, and because of the small group settings, they will also receive feedback from their peers. In year two of clinical skills, they will be with preceptors. At that point, they’ re going to get hands on training in the clinical outpatient setting.
Anything else about Year II? For Year II, also small groups, students will mostly be with their preceptors in the outpatient clinic three times a month. In addition to the preceptor sessions, students will attend a didactic session once monthly, so that they can still enhance their skills in a simulated session with feedback from a clinical instructor. in clinical case discussions and contribute fully as part of the medical team. As students develop their clinical skills and clinical reasoning skills, we intend for them to effectively approach clinical cases, and really start participating in the management of their patients.
We also want to ensure that students are exposed to social determinants of health and how to address disparities in health, whether it’ s culturally, linguistically, religious, or socioeconomically. Through use of diverse clinical case simulations, we intend for students to develop the skills necessary to diagnose and treat diverse patient populations.
This is the first time that these courses are being offered on campus, correct? Will some elements be changed or adapted as the courses migrate to campus? Given that this is the first time this course is being offered, it affords the opportunity to be very creative in how we establish the course content and allows us to ensure that aspects of the course especially as they relate to the CDU mission are highlighted. We can do this effectively by having the courses on our campus and really being able to shape how they are developed.
Are there unique elements that correspond with the CDU mission, vision and the CDU Advantage? Definitely. For clinical skills, our goal is for the students to participate in activities that promote and contribute to students’ compassionate care of patients, and to them being committed to addressing the social determinants of health as they care for patients of diverse backgrounds. In addition, we want to ultimately produce providers who will also advocate for their patients, and ensure that they receive appropriate medical treatment.
This will encompass both the pre-clerkship and clerkship phases. But given that clinical skills is one of the longitudinal courses that will span the four years, then we’ ll have opportunities to really continue to build on what students get from the pre- clerkship phase and enhance their clinical skills as they move through all 4 years of the program.
What are the intended outcomes of this of this training experience? For the pre-clerkship clinical skills training and experience over the first two years, we expect that students will gain confidence and reach a certain level in their clinical skills, such that in the clerkship phase, on their different rotations, they are able to participate
CDU College of Medicine | PG. 22