Clinical Skills Development

MD-PhD students are encouraged to proactively identify physician mentors from among the Yale faculty or clinicians in the community who can provide supervision and guidance for longitudinal clinical experiences. These experiences are instrumental in helping students maintain clinical continuity and involvement in patient care during the graduate research period. Elective credit is available, and students have the flexibility to propose and set tailored learning objectives depending on the discipline and duration of the arrangements. View the EL Clinical Longitudinal Elective.

Physician-Scientist Specialty Shadowing Opportunities is a new searchable database available to enable current MD-PhD students to match with physician-scientists at Yale to gain familiarity with different clinical specialties by shadowing them during days that they spend with patients, or to talk with them about balancing clinical and research obligations.

Wednesday Evening Clinic (WEC) is a longitudinal primary care clinic for up to 15 Yale Medical Students in Yale's Primary Care Center (a resident clinic during the daytime). Participation in WEC provides an opportunity for MD-PhD students to follow their own patients and complete the Primary Care Clerkship during their research years.

Responsibilities include seeing 1-3 patients/night, discussing the patients with an attending, and writing notes. Students will also present at pre-clinic conferences, and take turns bringing dinner. Work for the clinic is mostly completed during the evening on Wednesdays but follow-up on studies may occur throughout the week. Providers also may participate in the care of their patients outside of the clinic (i.e. scrub in on their surgeries). At WEC, students are able to follow their own cohort of patients over the course of many months.

There is a minimum commitment of 1 calendar year (many MD-PhDs stay a few years). Students are required to attend at least 38 of 50 clinic sessions. Students may start at any point during the year. Completion of the integrated Biopsychosocial Approach to Health (BAH) is required. Completion of Wednesday Evening Clinic (WEC) now fulfills the requirements for the clinical portion of the primary care component of the BAH clerkship.

For more information, please contact MD-PhD student Lee Ying.

HAVEN is a student-run free clinic in partnership with the Fair Haven Community Health Center (FHCHC) and Yale University. HAVEN provides primary care, reproductive healthcare, social services, and health education for uninsured members of the Fair Haven community. Students can get involved with HAVEN as early as their first semester at Yale.

HAVEN Free Clinic is open on Saturdays from 9am to noon and is located at: Fair Haven Community Health Center, 374 Grand Avenue in New Haven. For more information, please contact MD-PhD student Alanna Kaplan.

The Patient Navigator Program was started 2 years ago with the conviction that medical students need to have an opportunity to understand, in a concrete way, the context in which medical care is delivered and the circumstances outside the clinic that actually determine patients’ health. Students work throughout the year with just one or two patients to help identify and address social and economic barriers to health, like housing and food insecurity (e.g., patients can’t control diabetes if they don’t have access to healthy foods or a living situation that allows them to regularly take medications). Students typically perform home visits and work with patients within their communities, as well as helping patients to navigate the medical system. Our hope is that students will gain tools that they carry with them and continue to build upon throughout their medical careers. The Patient Navigator program is currently working with patients from three different clinics—the Primary Care Center, Connecticut Mental Health Center, and the Refugee Clinic (in collaboration with the Refugee Navigator Program).

Please contact Drew Daniels, Matt Meizlish or Lorenzo Sewanan for more information