Primary Care Ambulatory Clerkship

OST 602

The Primary Care Ambulatory Clerkship (PCAC) is a combined clinical and didactic experience in students' third year.

The clinical portion of the clerkship has three components: (1) a 12-week multidisciplinary primary care experience in family medicine, general internal medicine, and general pediatrics; (2) two 4-week specialty ambulatory experiences, including a 4-week Specialty Experience and a 4-week Choice Rotation; and (3) a 4-week Continuity Experience with a family physician. The concurrent weekly didactic experiences are primarily student-led, small-group sessions and include current case reviews, symptom seminars, critical appraisal of the medical literature, student presentations on primary care topics, workshops on procedures typically performed in primary care settings, and a module on clinical decision-making and managed care. The didactics are centered on the most common reasons people present to ambulatory settings as well as on students' own clinical experiences.