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UNIVERSITY PRIMARY CARE
CLINICS
FAMILY MEDICINE CLERKSHIP
The University Primary Care Clinics (UPCC) offer students
a unique opportunity to experience continuity-based medicine,
and students gain insight into primary care medicine while
gaining this hands-on experience. Students are given an in-depth
and continuing opportunity to develop the skills necessary
for competent and confident physician/patient relationships.
In addition to developing clinical expertise, they gain an
appreciation and understanding of the psychosocial impact
of disease on patients. They also begin to appreciate the
role of the community in the overall health care delivery
system.
Students begin their UPCC experience in October of the M2
year and attend the UPCC one afternoon per week until mid-May
when they increase their attendance to one full-day per week.
During this time, students begin to assimilate basic diagnostic
and therapeutic principles. Participating in care provides
students with strong motivation to transfer information from
medical textbooks and journals to clinical experience.
The curriculum in the UPCCs is continually evolving to meet
the needs of the rapidly changing health care environment.
Grants are used to conduct clinical and primary care research.
A program in clinical pharmacy is active at the UPCCs, and
affiliations with nursing homes provide service, education
and research in geriatrics. Nurse practitioners are active
participants in patient care and teaching.
The three UPCCs are situated in Belvidere, Mount Morris and
Rockton, Illinois. They are housed in attractive, modern,
brick buildings with accommodations similar to a medium-sized
group clinic office. The clinics vary slightly in size, offering
between 14 and 19 examination rooms. Each clinic is self-contained
with its own laboratory, x-ray, and trauma facilities. In
addition, each has computerized patient billing, a records
room, and ample conference and consultation space. Patients
are drawn from communities throughout northern Illinois and
southern Wisconsin. They come from all sectors of their communities,
representing a socioeconomic cross-section of the service
areas. There are more than 57,000 patient visits per year.
Students will be allowed to state a preference as to UPCC
location, but final assignments will be made to evenly distribute
each class and to accommodate any extraordinary individual
circumstances. Each student will remain at a single UPCC until
graduation.
There are four major compenents to the UPCC experience:
1) Patient Care,
2) Family Medicine,
3) Community Medicine, Preventive Medicine and Public Health,
4) Behavioral Science,
Instructional Objectives for the Patient Care Component
By the end of the M4 year, each student will
be able to:
- Obtain an accurate, pertinent history from all available
sources and record in a complete, concise and orderly manner.
- Perform and record a focused physical examination.
- Develop clinical reasoning in assessing the findings of
a history and physical examination.
- Demonstrate an understanding of the use of the clinical
laboratory, X-ray, and other testing procedures appropriate
for reaching a correct assessment of the clinical problem.
- Demonstrate ability to develop appropriate plan of treatment
and/or follow up of the clinical problem at hand.
- Utilizes each patient encounter to develop or enhance
the relationship with the patient, recognizing the patient’s
emotions and concerns.
Instructional Objectives for the Family Medicine Component
During the Family Medicine Clerkship, students will develop
and demonstrate clinical skills based on the following principles
of Family Medicine:
- Assume that the subject matter of Family Medicine is
the patient’s health, composed of physical,
psychological, and social components, rather than disease.
- Discover that the discipline of Family Medicine is predominantly
the management of and caring for
patients and their families rather than the treatment of
disease alone.
- Recognize that the patients’ health status impacts
their families and that families impact patients’
health.
- Utilize the opportunity that continuity of care presents
to construct and employ a database on patients and their
families.
- Determine when time can be used diagnostically and therapeutically
in the management of illness.
- Consider the impact of individual, social, cultural, psychological
factors in the development, management and outcome of disease.
- Integrate preventive care and health promotion into the
management of acute and chronic illness.
- Examine the role of the community and its structure in
which the family physician practices and recognize the risk
factors in the community and in the practice population.
- Assess the role of the physician-patient relationship
in the ongoing care of patients, treatment of disease and
outcomes.
Instructional Objectives for the Community
Medicine,
Preventive Medicine and Public Health Component
Students will
- become aware of the health problems related to Rockford
and the Northern Illinois communities in which their UPCCs
are located.
- utilize the social and health services available to patients
within the community.
- Know appropriate preventive services (health behavior
counseling, screening tests, immunizations, and chemoprophylaxis
for patients).
- Use acute, chronic, or health maintenance exams as opportunities
to practice health promotion and disease prevention.
- Use appropriate intervention techniques when counseling
for behavior change.
- Document their prevention oriented activities with patients.
- Understand how recommendations for preventive services
are derived by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.
- Use clinical management methods to assist in providing
preventive services to patient (patient education materials,
chart forms, office staff, etc...)
Instructional Objectives for the Behavioral
Science Component
Students will
- Utilize each patient encounter to develop or enhance
the relationship with the patient, recognizing the patient’s
emotions and concerns.
- Establish effective physician-patient relationships by
using appropriate interpersonal communication skills to
provide quality health care.
- Recognizing that psychiatric and psychosocial difficulties
complicate disease processes.
- Identify, treat, and/or refer psychiatric and psychosocial
problems that manifest in primary care patients.
- Demonstrate a basic understanding of the professional
and ethical issues facing family physicians.
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