To become life-long learners, students must develop self-directed learning skills, an essential component of medical education. Before starting a clerkship, students should ask, "What should I learn during this clerkship?” and “How will I learn it?” In general, the answers fall into three domains: medical knowledge, clinical skills, and professional behavior.
Medical knowledge is acquired through didactic activities, general and patient-specific reading, conferences, and other learning activities. Each core clerkship includes required web-based educational activities that support independent learning preparation for the NBME Clinical Subject Examinations and USMLE Step 2.
Clinical skills and professional behavior are developed through supervised and observed patient encounters and interactions with senior physicians. Students must maintain an electronic Patient Encounter Log (PEL), which documents required clinical experiences. The PEL includes a clerkship-specific “must see list” of symptoms and diseases with which students are expected to become familiar. Students must also recognize categories of patient care, including preventive, emergency, acute, chronic, continuing, rehabilitative and end-of-life care.
Patients documented in the PEL should form the basis for active, independent learning. Through this patient-centered process, students develop the ability to identify, analyze, synthesize, and critically appraise relevant information and information sources.
Students’ progress through the academic curriculum is assessed against defined benchmarks in medical knowledge, clinical skills, and professional behavior. These competencies are evaluated through patient bedside and conference discussions, review of the PEL, patient write-ups, and the final clerkship evaluation.