Master & Longitudinal Course Update
Clinical Skills Course Update MS2s
As you embark on the next step in your training, reflect on some of the lessons your CS faculty have tried to impart over the past 18 months. Remember the privilege patients are giving you by allowing you to be involved in their care; approach your patient interactions with preparation, humility, appreciation, and your full presence. Your gift of time and attention may be your biggest contribution to their care. Use that time to get to know your patients. They are giving you permission to learn about their lives and bodies and expect that you will do so - ask important questions, perform careful physical exams, connect the dots as you use clinical reasoning skills. But also take time for reflection after you see patients. Reflection will help you consolidate your knowledge and allow you to find meaning in even the most challenging encounters with patients and supervisors. Think back to ILCE and recognize the important roles that non-physicians have on the team. Trust and respect your non-physician colleagues, and they will become your advocates, teachers, and partners in patient care. Think back to early lessons from Dr. Fortin – give voice to your empathy. In their suffering, patients may not experience your empathy unless you articulate it through the methods you’ve learned. Most importantly, have fun with medicine. Maintain an appreciation for the wonder of bedside medicine – finding the important clue on history, uncovering a classic but overlooked exam finding, making a genuine connection with a patient. Doing this will make the long hours and sacrifices even more worthwhile. There are many more lessons, and fortunately we will have more chances to work together on the wards, clinics, ORs, and more advanced classroom sessions in the years ahead!
If you have questions, concerns, or suggestions about the CS curriculum please contact Dr. Jaideep Talwalkar or Tracy Yale or any of your CS faculty.
Transition Course
Welcome to Transitions week! There will be sessions that are important for preparing you in a regulatory readiness point of view (such as trainings on HIPAA, Infection Control, and Needlestick incidents), as well as a heavy dose of clinical skills training (phlebotomy, use of EPIC, use of telehealth, clinical application of pharmacology, entrustable professional activities, introduction to simulation, and note writing) to augment what you’ve already experienced in Clinical Skills, ILCE and MCE. Woven throughout this course and the twelve months of the clerkship period will be an emphasis on professionalism. We’ve included a session by the same name and one on boundary violations to help you think about what it means, how to achieve it, and how it may be threatened. All in all, many learning activities that will be very useful to you over the clerkship year. The schedule is in BlueDogs and note that there are mandatory sessions throughout the week. Attendance will be taken for the mandatory sessions in BlueDogs by the same process that you are familiar with from other pre-clerkship courses. Let Dr. David Hersh or the Manager of the Clerkships, Gina Franco know if you have any questions.
To allow for a more productive and effective session on the use of EPIC, you have been asked to complete a small set of simple tasks on the EPIC playground prior to joining that session during Transitions. Doing so will ensure that you have access to and know how to enter that platform, leaving more time to explore EPIC during the actual training session.
After a well-deserved winter break, you will dive into the clerkship year. It starts with the school-wide Precede, which is what the first day of each 12-week block is called. That’ll be on January 3rd. It is a time to come together as an entire class and experience learning activities on topics that are relevant across the clerkships. Content areas across the four Precedes include clinical skills, wellness, communication, health equity, and end-of-life/palliative care. Expect that the day will begin at about 8:30am. Gina Franco will email you the final schedule prior to the start of the winter break.
Absences from Clerkships in the First Block
Please recall that attendance in your clinical clerkships is expected, both in the clinical and didactic activities. The policy regarding attendance is found here.
If you are ill, need to seek health-related care, experience a death in your family, or are observing a religious holiday, please contact your clerkship director and clerkship coordinator as soon as possible.
An absence for more than 3 days during a 12-week clerkship block may need to be made up or may lead to an incomplete at the discretion of the leadership of the clerkship.
Students are permitted up to 3 days absence to present at a conference, one time in the clerkship year. Requests for such absences must be submitted 30 days prior to the 12-week integrated clerkship. The deadline for requesting an absence from your clerkships in the first block (1/3/2023-3/24/2023) to present your research at a conference has passed. It was December 5th. Requests submitted at this point will likely be denied unless there are significant extenuating circumstances. If you feel that is the case, please contact Gina Franco to receive a Request to attend Conference Form, complete the form and submit it to Dr. David Hersh and Gina Franco. Do not pay for travel or hotel until you hear back from Gina and Dr. Hersh about a decision on your request. As a reminder, you are allowed to be absent only once from clerkships for a conference over the 12-month period; so, choose carefully which conference you'd like to attend. Also, the absence should only be for up to three days - a day to travel to the conference, a day to present, and a day to travel back to the New Haven area. You will not be excused to attend the entirety of the conference.
If you have any questions, please contact Dr. David Hersh or the Manager of the Clerkships and ATP, Gina Franco.
Reporting Concerns About Mistreatment, Harassment, or Bias
At the end of each component of your clerkship blocks, you will have the opportunity to complete an evaluation of your experience on the clerkship. Similar to the courses, we ask about experiences of mistreatment, harassment, or bias. These reports will not be visible to your clerkship directors prior to completing their evaluations of you. The reports are reviewed on a quarterly basis and are shared with the Office of Academic and Professional Development. Clerkship directors and departments are expected to document how they are responding to every incident reported by a student. In collaboration with Dean Robert Rohrbaugh, Dean Illuzzi follows up with the Chairs of the Departments to monitor progress in addressing issues of professionalism and conduct in the learning environment.
There is also a way to report a concern on a real time basis here through the OAPD website. Use this link for real-time reporting. This site also provides a more detailed description of how professionalism concerns are handled at YSM.
You may ALWAYS contact your clerkship/elective director, advisor, or deans, if you have a concern that you would like to discuss. We will respect your confidentiality and talk about ways to approach or address issues you may encounter.
If you have any questions, please contact Dr. David Hersh or the Manager of the Clerkships and ATP, Gina Franco.
AAMC Y2 Survey
By this time, you all should have received the link to the Y2Q survey from the AAMC which closes on January 2, 2023. This important survey assists us in continuing to improve the curriculum and the learning environment. For this to be representative of your class, we need as many of you to participate as possible. The aggregate responses will be reviewed by Dean Brown, education leadership and the departments at YSM. They will also be reviewed by the LCME, our accreditation body, and your responses will inform changes in the curriculum as well as innovations at YSM.
To create a fun and rewarding incentive for your class, Dean Illuzzi has partnered with HAVEN Free Clinic to contribute some of her discretionary funds from the Deputy Dean's budget to HAVEN. Many students and providers volunteer at HAVEN to provide free care to uninsured patients in our community. The HAVEN executive directors have shared areas in which they would like to provide further support to their patients, particularly regarding covering medical transportation and medications. As many of you know, HAVEN has its own budget, which is funded by gifts, endowments (which are a part of the Yale endowment directed to HAVEN), and support from YSM. Therefore, Dean Illuzzi has created a discretionary fund that can be accessed by HAVEN leadership to pay for some of these additional costs not included in the annual budget with the goal of improving access to care.
For the Y2Q survey, we will provide up to $10 per survey completed to the HAVEN discretionary fund. If your class reaches above 90%, we will match this contribution, thus doubling the contribution to $20 per survey. This can generate up to $2000 per class for the AAMC surveys and would allow HAVEN to provide transportation and cover some medications to those patients who would otherwise not be able to access the clinic or take optimal medications prescribed.
Currently, 53.3% of MS2s have completed the survey. We hope you will find the link to the survey in your email and complete it as soon as you can!