Core Clinical Experiences and Mid-Clerkship Feedback

Purpose

To delineate the requirements for core clinical experiences and the provision of mid-clerkship feedback for the required clinical clerkships.

Overview

The completion of the core clinical clerkships is a joint obligation between the students, the student’s supervising physicians, and the site director/clerkship chair. In turn, logging and reviewing the patient log helps site directors and clerkship chairs ensure that students are meeting the clerkship learning objectives and allows monitoring of the comparability of clinical experiences. These processes align with LCME standards 6.2 Required Clinical Experiences, 8.6 Monitoring of Completion of Required Clinical Experiences, and 9.7 Formative Assessment and Feedback.

Policy

• Clerkships will establish and publish a list of required clinical experiences that students must complete to meet clerkship requirements.
• Students are responsible for maintaining the patient log of clinical experiences for all patients they see in an ongoing manner during required clerkships.
• The students will receive feedback from supervising faculty and/or clerkship site directors midway through the rotation. This feedback should include an assessment of the student’s performance in comparison to clerkship objectives and the School of Medicine clinical performance rubric, and may also include a review of the patient log of clinical experiences.
• The clerkship chair, site directors, and coordinators will track completion of mid-clerkship feedback. Aggregate data on mid-clerkship feedback is reviewed with the clerkship chairs committee regularly.
• Failure of a student to maintain a log of required clinical experiences and/or to complete all required experiences or their equivalent by the end of the clerkship will result in an Incomplete.
• An Incomplete will be converted to the appropriate clerkship grade once all required experiences or their equivalent have been completed and the patient log updated.

Procedures

• Students must log all of their patient encounters per the established list of required clinical experiences specific to each clerkship on an ongoing basis throughout each clerkship.
• Each student should discuss any outstanding clinical experiences with the supervising physicians, and with the site director prior to the conclusion of the clerkship, including alternative activities that can be used to fulfill clerkship requirements.