Family Medicine:

The third-year clerkship in family medicine exposes students to primary-care role models and ambulatory clinical experiences in contemporary health-care delivery away from the tertiary-care setting. This four-week clerkship has both didactic and clinical portions.

The clinical portion of the clerkship is based primarily at family medicine residency programs affiliated with UT Southwestern and the family medicine residency program located at UT Tyler and John Peter Smith Hospital. Some students also are based at private practitioner offices in Arlington, Colleyville and Bedford that are designated clerkship sites. The UT Southwestern-affiliated sites include Charlton Methodist Hospital, Dallas; UT Southwestern University Hospital-St. Paul, Dallas; McLennan County Family Practice Center, Waco; and UT Southwestern-Parkland Family Medicine Residency Program, Dallas. Each of these sites is staffed by UT Southwestern faculty. Students see patients at the family medicine centers and in a variety of other practice sites, including private offices, under the supervision of adjunct clinical faculty.

The didactic portion of the clerkship consists of lectures and small-group activities that focus on clinical topics and patient and family issues commonly encountered in a family medicine environment. Clerks prepare and present a patient study to faculty at each site and participate in conferences.

Each student spends 8 intensive weeks as a clinical clerk on general internal medicine inpatient services. Each student spends fours weeks at Parkland Memorial Hospital, four weeks at Dallas Veterans Affairs Medical Center, UT Southwestern University Hospital-St. Paul or Baylor University Medical Center. An additional 4 weeks is spent on a subspecialty service, either an admitting service or a consultant service. In both cases, ambulatory subspecialty medicine clinics are included.

The student is assigned patients in rotation under the supervision of house staff and attending physicians. The clinical clerk is responsible for written admission workups, progress notes and oral presentations as well as for participation in the ongoing care of patients.

The objectives of the clerkship are to develop proficiency in approaching the diagnosis and therapy of serious medical illness, to foster an appreciation of disease as the expression of deranged physiology, to inculcate habits of critical inquiry and self-education, and to enhance an appreciation of the physician’s responsibility to the patient.

Teaching is carried out on rounds with house staff and attending physicians and at conferences and lectures specifically organized for the clerks. Each student must undertake a systematic program of daily reading in standard texts and journals. Attendance at departmental events such as Grand Rounds, Clinical-Pathological Conference, the case presentations at noontime Potpourri and Residents’ Conference completes this educational experience.

A comprehensive and intensive neurology clerkship has been designed to offer instruction in the diagnosis and management of neurologically ill patients. The students participate actively in the evaluation and care of patients on neurology services such as those at Parkland Memorial Hospital, Dallas Veterans Affairs Medical Center and Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas. Clinical conferences, tutorial seminars and didactic teaching sessions are important parts of the clerkship. The clerkship prepares the student to evaluate neurological disease and to apply knowledge of anatomy, physiology and pathology to the formulation of an appropriate differential diagnosis.

Note: Neurology was a fourth year clerkship until academic year 2006-2007.