Family Medicine - Advanced Primary Care

Description

Students may add themselves to the waiting list for this course during add/drop periods but not during lottery periods. This four-week sub-internship level outpatient course will provide an immersive outpatient family medicine experience, with emphasis on evaluation and development of Entrustable Professional Activities for Residency. Please contact Katherine Miller at Katherine_Miller@hms.harvard.edu at the time of enrollment to discuss site options. Students will be placed in community practices, most commonly at Cambridge Health Alliance, and will independently evaluate patients who present for acute visits, health maintenance visits, hospital follow up, and follow up of chronic conditions. In addition to obtaining history and performing physical exam, students will develop and prioritize a differential diagnosis for each patient, provide written and oral presentations of each patient, place orders for appropriate treatment and evaluative testing (to be reviewed by the preceptor) and, with the guidance of their preceptor, discuss assessment and treatment plans with the patient, deliver patient education and practice shared decision-making models. Students will be expected to interpret all testing results, and after discussion with preceptor communicate the results to their patients. Students may also follow prenatal patients, and participate in outpatient procedures such as IUD placements and skin procedures including pre-procedure counseling and informed consent. Students will also have options for time in the reproductive health clinic, postpartum, newborn nursery and labor and delivery. Students will participate in care team meetings and coordinate their patient care activities with other members of the team. Each week students will submit brief weekly Evidence Based Medicine assignments, and there will be two final projects - a community study based on a complex patient from the practice and a practice quality improvement project.