Clerkships & Advanced Practice (M.D. Program)

To optimally prepare students to enter clerkship training, all medical students are required to participate in a Transition to Clerkship Course. This course facilitates the transition into the clinical realm with simulation-based procedural skills training, communication skills training with standardized patients, and small and large group didactic sessions to review critical concepts in Professionalism, Patient Safety, and Medical Errors, and Health Systems.

During clerkships, you’ll function as a member of an interprofessional clinical team of attending physicians, residents, interns, nurses and allied health professionals. You’ll have many opportunities to apply what you’ve learned in the classroom through supervised patient care, conferences, feedback and teaching rounds. You’ll broaden your knowledge of the clinical manifestations of disease processes, and continue to develop your interviewing and physical examination techniques and communication skills. Under supervision, you will begin to assume responsibility for the evaluation and treatment of patients. Through these experiences, you’ll also begin to learn what area of medicine you’re most interested in. With supportive and insightful mentorship, you’ll gain valuable practice skills to become a competent and compassionate health care provider.

The goal of the Transition to Fourth Year course is to prepare students for the increasing responsibility they will experience as fourth-year medical students. Students will gain knowledge and skills related to working and collaborating on health care teams, giving and receiving patient handoffs effectively and preventing and evaluating medical errors. Content is delivered through both large-group didactic sessions and small-group workshops and simulation activities. Additional sessions focus on professional development, Step 2 preparation and the residency application process.

The one-week Transition to Residency program is an interactive “capstone” course that facilitates a student’s transition from medical school into specialized residency programs. During this course, students are organized into specialty tracks and engage in simulation-based procedural skills and hand-off training, evaluation and management of a critically ill patient, case-based problem-solving sessions and group didactic sessions to review strategies to enhance professional development and preparedness for residency training.