Clerkships
Students must complete clerkships in multiple clinical disciplines as one means of ensuring both breadth and depth of clinical exposure. The Family and Community Medicine Clerkship is designed to increase the students experience with practicing physicians, the array of experiences encountered in the community, the evaluation of patients in this setting, the use of community resources and their coordination to provide a team approach to patient health care, and the use and mastery of the problem-focused history and physical examination. This will provide students the opportunity to observe patients in their own environment to better appreciate its potential impact on disease causation and prevention, as well as patient compliance. The inpatient setting encountered in the clerkships in Internal Medicine, Neurology, Pediatrics, Surgery, Obstetrics and Gynecology, as well as other clinical disciplines will provide students an opportunity to master an array of clinical skills including the comprehensive integration of the history and physical examination with diagnostic procedures, therapy, and an expanding knowledge base within the specific areas. Many of these clerkships involve ambulatory care experiences in the outpatient clinics or as part of the College’s and Hospital’s outreach programs, in addition to the experience on the wards.
Core Clerkships
- Family and Community Medicine
- Internal Medicine
- Clinical Neurology
- Clinical Obstetrics & Gynecology
- Clinical Pediatrics
- Clinical Psychiatry
- Clinical Surgery
- Emergency Medicine
After completing the Core clerkships, students must successfully complete Step 1 or Step 2 of the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) before they may be promoted to the Pathways component of the curriculum. Students typically complete steps 1 and 2 of the USMLE during the spring of M3 year and the early fall of their M4 year.
The final clerkships of the curriculum will include an ICU experience, a Sub-Internship experience, and a menu of recommended selectives and electives that allow students to explore their future careers. These clerkships help individualize medical education and tailor it to fit the student’s needs during the next phase of their training and throughout their career.