Evaluation forms were developed to assess professional attitudes and behavior. Faculty and housestaff use these to evaluate their students. Students use identical forms to evaluate themselves and their peers. Students also develop personal objectives for the clerkship and reevaluate these midway an at the clerkship end. Since July 1996.
Students complete a post-clerkship form discussing the peer evaluation process.
This project has empowered students to modify their perceptions, behavior and direction in a meaningful way. M.D. Core clerkships are hospital based and discipline specific. But as more and more patients are evaluated and treated in the ambulatory setting, this hospital based discipline specific model increasingly becomes an impediment to a coherent student experience. Further, efforts to add new experiences and novel programs in response to the changing nature of health care delivery are a patchwork and increasingly look like noise in the system rather than a program of gradually increasingly knowledge and skills. The main tenet of this project is that if all the disciplines sit down together and plan together across the year, they can design a core clinical experience that will better prepare the students in general medicine than is currently done, will do so more efficiently, utilize time better, and find time for other programs and concepts that until now have struggled for a place in the curriculum.