Undergraduate Program Report
In the midst of rising COVID cases, clinical rotations for clerkship and electives are continuing. Thank you to the preceptors who are dedicated to excellence in training our physicians of tomorrow. As the holiday season approaches, I hope that you are able to find some down-time to recharge. As a reminder, the Meds 2022 clerks are to be given one week of holidays between Dec 19 and Jan 3rd, based on individual preceptor/clinic schedules. Meds 2021 electives will be paused Dec 19th to Jan 3rd to give 4th years a 2-week holiday break.
The start of the new Family Medicine PLUS clerkship rotation has seen the introduction of a new Quality of Care project students are required to complete. The project uses the Model for Improvement framework to define a clinical improvement opportunity. Projects, such as “The use of EMR search tool functions to streamline implementation of public health guidelines,” have helped students to see how quality improvement fits into day-to-day practice. If you have questions about the project please don’t hesitate to reach out to me. Also, if your student completed a particularly excellent project, I would love to hear about it!
Looking into the new year, I am pleased to see family medicine teaching featured predominantly in the new Transition to Clerkship course for second year students. This 16-week course, starting February 8th, aims to teach students to participate in authentic clinical tasks and activities, familiarize them with relationships in clinical settings, as well as introduce them to work practices within healthcare. Thank you to family medicine faculty – Drs. Andrew Hemphill, Reema Ray, Trish Valcke and Jessica Howard – who have course champion roles delivering family medicine, palliative care and dermatology content in this course.
As always, if you have questions, concerns, ideas, or would like to get more involved in undergraduate education in family medicine, please contact me at smckay28@uwo.ca.
