During their third year of medical school, all UAB Heersink School of Medicine students must complete a four-week family medicine clerkship. This clerkship gives students a hands-on introduction to family medicine through clinical experiences with one of our preceptors—all talented and dedicated physicians who can provide excellent mentorship and guidance.
The clerkship helps students build skills and establish core competencies in the family physician’s approach to the practice of medicine. The clerkship experience emphasizes several essential and unique aspects of family medicine, including the opportunity to care for a broad spectrum of patients in an ambulatory setting. Students strengthen skills including interviewing, history taking physical examination and physical diagnosis, and assessing and managing both routine and complicated medical conditions. They also learn to apply principles of quality, cost-effective health care, patient education, and health promotion.
The Family Medicine Clerkship emphasizes:
- Contact: Family medicine physicians are often the first contact for acute care concerns.
- Continuity of Care: Family medicine physicians provide ongoing longitudinal primary care for the lifetime of a patient population.
- Coordination of Care: Family medicine physicians help coordinate care for the patient with other specialty physicians and with the larger healthcare system.
- Complexity of Care/Comprehensiveness: Family medicine physicians are able to address a host of health and social concerns regardless of pathology, age or gender of the patient. Family medicine manages patients who deal with a breadth of complicated chronic disease states.
- Context: Family medicine physicians consider the patient in the context of their environment, and consider the social determinants of health, while also respecting the cultural beliefs and concerns of the patient.
- Preventative Medicine: Family medicine is focused on providing preventative medicine and screening for all patient populations at all stages of their lifespan.
For more information, and to request preceptor placement, contact us at fmstudenteduc@uabmc.edu. or reach out to a member of the Clerkship team.
Associate Professor
Director, Family Medicine Clerkship
Education Administrator
crystalodom@uabmc.edu