Required Courses

Introduction to the Patient (MDC 6006)

The Introduction to the Patient course offers first-year students clinical experiences beginning in their first month of medical school. The course focuses on communication, the psychosocial context of the patient, the doctor-patient relationship and the physician's developing professional identity. Other issues addressed include community service, health care coverage, multiculturalism, and a multidisciplinary approach to patient care. The course includes clinical site visits at physicians' offices and community service agencies, small group sessions facilitated by clinical faculty, and an optional in-hospital shadowing experience.

Goals of the course are to increase students' appreciation of the patient as an individual, and to increase students' understanding of the aspects of the patient's life that have an impact on health and illness, including cultural beliefs, roles played by family members, health related behaviors, and payment systems. The course promotes skills that enhance the doctor-patient relationship and emphasize the importance of patient-centered communication. Students become aware of the importance of their own cultural beliefs and attitudes in their roles as physicians.

Course Co-Directors: Joyce G. Afran, M.D., Assistant Professor of Family Medicine, and Peter M. Aupperle, M.D., Associate Professor of Psychiatry

2 credits

Third Year Family Medicine Clerkship (FMED 8000)

Eight weeks. The required clerkship in Family Medicine offers students an introduction to the principles of family medicine and to the family practice approach to health care in the ambulatory setting.

The primary focus of the clerkship is the preceptorship. Each student spends approximately four days per week working with an assigned physician preceptor primarily in his/her office. Students are placed in the offices of private family physicians or in model offices affiliated with family practice residency programs in New Jersey.

Additional clinical components of the clerkship include: hospital rounding, a community-based service-learning experience, and a selective rotation with family physicians who focus on specific areas. Students spend one day per week attending seminars at the medical school. Students participate in an orientation session at the start of the clerkship and complete a final written examination at the end.

The purpose of this clerkship is to ensure that all medical students have a full understanding and appreciation of an integrative approach to the care of patients, families and communities. The clerkship provides students with the opportunity to develop an understanding of the precepts of family medicine through active involvement in the provision of accountable, evidence-based, continuous and comprehensive care.

Each of the six goals of the clerkship is defined by a set of competencies addressing the Attitudes, Skills and Knowledge to be attained by medical students during this clerkship. These goals are:

To help students develop an appreciation of the approach to undifferentiated acute and chronic health problems commonly presented by patients and families in the outpatient setting;
To familiarize students with the basic principles of family medicine, including the provision of continuous and comprehensive care regardless of age, sex, or symptoms and to develop an understanding of the family's effect on and response to health and disease;
To promote the importance of the physician's role and responsibilities in disease prevention, health enhancement strategies and patient education;
To equip students with critical-thinking abilities which include the problem-oriented approach to patient care, medical decision making and self-directed learning;
To foster sensitivity to the biomedical, psychosocial, cultural, ethical, and economic issues that affect patients, their families, and their environment; and
To help students appreciate the full professional role of the family physician, including the management of consultation and referral and use of specific community resources.