Family Medicine Clerkship

Welcome to Family Medicine!

Clinical education in Family Medicine is designed to enable students to establish competencies in the family physician's approach to the practice of medicine. The approach emphasizes the provision of medical care for a broad spectrum of patients in an ambulatory setting. This training in family medicine will provide students the opportunity to strengthen basic skills which are essential in any specialty of clinical medicine. These skills include interviewing, history taking, physical examination, and physical diagnosis. In addition, students will learn to assess the social and psychological context of illness and the therapeutic role of the family physician in that context. The assessment and management of both routine and complicated medical conditions will be integrated with the application of the principles of quality, cost- effective health care, patient education, and health promotion.

At the end of the clerkship, the student should be able to demonstrate a clear, deliberate and effective problem-solving approach to tasks inherent in all physicians' roles and essential to a family physician's role. The process of problem-solving will be emphasized and evaluated as the student applies them to the analytic tasks and interventions which follow.