It has enabled more than 150 students to spend one day of every week in primary care offices throughout the region, from Longwood Avenue to the City of Lawrence. The clerkship has also achieved several other firsts, according to Robert Fletcher, professor of ambulatory care and prevention at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and director of the clerkship. If patients are going to forego visits to the hospital for visits to their doctor at a local office, it was very important for us to act accordingly, and move the educational component from the hospital setting into the clinic. In the clerkship, the students weekly session at their assigned site forms the basis of their experience. The students also attend monthly, large group, case-based, interactive sessions patterned after the New Pathway of the first two years.
Students have the opportunity to treat patients, prescribe medicine, and schedule appointments.
The clerkship provides longitudinal connections between students and physicians, he says, but since students are only in the clinics one day each week, the clerkship sometimes fails to fulfill the intent of forging bonds between students and patients. To help address this limitation, next year's program will encourage all students to make post-appointment phone calls and to ask patients to schedule subsequent appointments when the students will be there to see them, Fletcher says.