Dr. Shanika Boyce Discusses the Clinical Skills Rubric( continued) the skills, and they’ re doing well as they’ re going along.
Another aspect also in terms of maximizing student’ s ability to grasp the training is the feedback that they get from faculty members, and also from the standardized patients. They’ re getting the patient’ s perspective of how well they’ re doing and communicating with them, and the ability to get the faculty’ s perspective.
Not just communication from their point of view, but also more of the clinical reasoning perspective, as well, thinking through the patient’ s history.
How does clinical skills training aligns with the CDU mission and vision and the CDU Advantage? When it comes to the mission of the school wanting to produce physicians who want to go back out into the community, who want to really address health and justice, that is a big part of our course. We are producing students who look like members of the community, who want to go back into their own communities to provide health care. The goal is to ensure that students have the skillsets to do so. A major part of clinical skills is building those steps.
The other part of the course which I didn’ t mention yet is the service-learning component. Even in the first year, they’ re getting exposed through EMT ride-alongs with community health workers. They do this together with the street medicine team. They go out into the community to one of their sites such as Granada on Broadway. They’ re providing health screenings to community members. They’ re able to take some of what they get from the Clinical Skills course, and they’ re also getting exposed to patient navigation, when they are with the Drew C. A. R. E. S. team and they’ re able to interact with the patient navigators at that clinic.
How do these courses satisfy LCME requirements that will lead to full accreditation for the four-year medical program? With LCME, the goal is to produce medical students who are ready for the next step of residency. One aspect when we think about medical schools and competencies, there’ s what’ s called trustable professional activities, which basically covers student’ s readiness for residency. Some of the key things that are on this list such as history, performing a physical exam, prioritizing differential diagnoses following a clinical encounter, and being able to interpret diagnostic screening tests are all part of the course.
That’ s one of the things I actually looked at in developing the course, making sure that the skill sets that they want to see from students to make sure that they’ re ready for residency. By the time they are in the fourth year, we want to make sure that students are competent in these areas. I definitely considered increasing the course and making sure that okay, we’ re ready early on, from the get-go, so that we avoid students being delayed in developing the proper skill sets or poor habits that need to be corrected.
I took those into account as I was seeing what type of instructional activities should be included, to ensure this readiness that will allow us to meet LCME requirements because this is a huge component that they want to see and make sure that we have integrated it.
When we assist by working with clients who have HIV and their health management, we want to reflect the skill sets in the classroom setting within those patients. But they’ re also going to have opportunities to interact with community members at this time.
That’ s a key part of the CDU mission and vision because we’ re providing these opportunities early on for them to see what it will be like to work with the community once they do finish and become physicians. I think that’ s really important. As I was building the course, we wanted to ensure, that there were definitely elements of community service there. Thinking through advocacy topics as well. And ensuring that they are able to see many of these things in real time as they learn about it in the classroom setting.
CDU College of Medicine | PG. 29